
THE HUGUENOTS 



Works by the same Author. 



LIVES OF BRITISH ENGINEERS. From the Earliest 

Period down to the Death of Robert Stephenson. With an 
Account of their Principal Works, and a History of Inland Communi- 
cation in Britain ; with 9 Portraits and 342 Woodcuts. Four vols. 8vo, 
2 is. each. 

Vol. I. Vermuyden ; Myddelton ; Erindley. 
II. Smeaton ; Rennie ; Telford. 

III. George and Robert Stephenson. 

IV. Boulton and Watt. 



Popular Editions. Post Svo, 6s. each. 
SELF-HELP J$th thousand. 

INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY : A Sequel to 

"Self-Help" ...... I$th thousand. 

LIVES OF BRINDLEY & THE EARLY ENGINEERS. 

LIVES OF GEORGE & ROBERT STEPHENSON. 

30th thousand. 



THE HUGUENOTS 



THEIR 

SETTLEMENTS, CHUKCHES, & INDUSTKIES 
IN ENGLAND AND IEELAND 



By SAMUEL SMILES 

u 

AUTHOR OF ' SELF-HELP,' ' LIVES OF THE ENGINEERS,' ETC. 



LONDON 

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
1867 




Printed by R. Clark, Edinburgh, 



PREFACE. 



The geographical position of Britain has, from the 
earliest times, rendered it a country of refuge. 
Fronting Europe, yet separated from it by a deep 
sea-moat, the proscribed of other lands have by turns 
sought the protection of the island fortress, and made 
it their home. To the country of the Britons the 
Saxons brought their industry, the Northmen their 
energy, and the Flemings and French their skill and 
spirit of liberty ; and out of the whole has come the 
English nation. 

The early industry of England was almost entirely 
pastoral. Down to a comparatively recent period, it 
was a great grazing country, and its principal staple 
was wool. The English people being as yet unskilled 
in the arts of manufacture, the wool was bought up 
by foreign merchants, and exported abroad in large 
quantities, principally to Flanders and France, there 
to be manuf°ctured into cloth, and partly returned in 
that form for sale in the English markets. 



vi 



PREFACE. 



The English kings, desirous of encouraging home 
industry, held out repeated inducements to foreign 
artizans to come over and settle in the country for the 
purpose of instructing their subjects in the industrial 
arts. This policy was pursued during many successive 
reigns, more particularly in that of Edward III. ; 
and, by the middle of the fourteenth century, large 
numbers of Flemish artizans, driven out of the Low 
Countries by the tyranny of the trades-unions as well 
as by civil war, embraced the offers held out to them, 
settled in various parts of England, and laid the foun- 
dations of English skilled industry."' 5 " 

But by far the most important migrations of skilled 
foreigners out of Europe were occasioned by the re- 
ligious persecutions which prevailed in Flanders and 
France for a considerable period after the Eeformation. 
Two great waves of foreign population then flowed 
over from the Continent into England — probably the 
largest in point of numbers which have occurred since 
the date of the Saxon settlement. The first took place 
in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and con- 
sisted partly of French, but principally of Flemish 
Protestants ; the second, towards the end of the seven- 



* See Appendix, for account of the "Early Settlement of Foreign Artizans 
in England." 



PRE FA CE. 



vii 



teenth century, consisted almost entirely of French 
Huguenots. 

The second of these emigrations, consequent on the 
religious persecutions which followed the Kevocation 
of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., was of extra- 
ordinary magnitude. According to Sismondi, the loss 
which it occasioned to France was not far short of 
a million of persons, and those her best and most 
industrious subjects. Although the circumstances con- 
nected with this remarkable exodus, as well as the 
events which flowed from them, exercised an import- 
ant influence on the political as well as industrial 
history of Northern Europe, they have as yet, viewed 
in this connection, received but slight notice at the 
hands of the historian. 

It is the object of the following book more par- 
ticularly to give an account of the causes which led 
to this last great migration of foreign Protestants from 
France into England, and to describe its effects upon 
English industry as well as English history. The author 
merely offers the book as a contribution to the subject, 
which seems to him to be one well worthy of further 
investigation. 



London, July 1867. 



CONTENTS. 



♦ 

CHAPTER I. 

INVENTION OF PRINTING RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS. 

Invention of Printing — Dearness of MS. Books — Power conferred on Educated 
Men by Printing — Coster, Gutenburg, Schceffer — The first printed Bible 
— Faust of Mainz — Diffusion of Printing — Spread of printed Bibles — 
Opposed by the Priests — Effects of reading the Bible — Luther's Transla- 
tion—Bibles printed at Antwerp — Eager Demand for the Scriptures — 
Ecclesiastical Abuses assailed — The Eeformation at Meaux — Jacques 
Lefevre — Eesistance of the Sorbonne — Burning of Bibles and Printers — 
Eise of the Huguenots ..... Pages 1-23 

CHAPTER II. 

EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF BERNARD PALISSY. 

The Life of Palissy illustrative of his Epoch — His Birth and Education — 
Travels through France, Germany, and Flanders — The prevailing Excite- 
ment — Palissy joins "The Eeligion" — Life at Saintes — His pursuit of the 
Secret of the Enamel — His Sufferings — Calvin at Saintonge — Palissy 
begins a Reformed Church at Saintes — The early Gospellers — Philebert 
Hamelin — Progress of " The Eeligion" — The Persecutions at Saintes — 
Palissy employed by the Duke of Montmorency — Imprisoned at Bor- 
deaux — Liberated and made Royal Potter — Dies for his Religion in the 
Bastile ........ 24-48 

CHAPTER III. 

PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS. 

Huguenot Men of Genius — Spread of " The Religion" — Charles IX. and 
Catherine de Medicis — A National Council held — The Chancellor de 
l'Hopital — Catherine's Letter to the Pope— Outbreak of Persecution — 



X 



CONTENTS. 



Massacre of Vassy — The Duke of Guise : Triumph of his Policy — Mas- 
sacres throughout France — Civil War — The Iconoclasts — Treaty of Peace 
— Council of Trent — Catherine de Medicis and the Duke of Alva — Igna- 
tius Loyola — Persecutions in Flanders — Philip II. of Spain — Devastation 
of the Low Countries and Flight of the Protestants — Marriage of Henry 
of Navarre and Margaret of France — Attempted Assassination of Admiral 
Coligny — Massacre of Saint Bartholomew — Rejoicings at Eome — Death of 
Charles IX. — Flight of Huguenots — Renewed Civil War — Accession of 
Henry IV.— The Edict of Nantes . . . Pages 49-76 

CHAPTER IV. 

RELATIONS OF ENGLAND WITH FRANCE AND SPAIN. 

England at the Accession of Elizabeth — The Pope denies the Queen's Legiti- 
macy — Plots against her Life — The English Asylum granted to the 
Foreign Protestants a cause of Offence abroad — Demands that the Fugi- 
tives be expelled the Kingdom — The Pope denounces the Refugees — 
Bishop Jewel's Defence of them — French and Spanish Plots against Eliza- 
beth — Mary Queen of Scots — The Pope's Bull against Elizabeth — The 
Bishop of Ross and Ridolfi — Conference at Madrid — The Plots defeated 
— News of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew arrive in England — 
Reception of the French Ambassador by Elizabeth — Execution of the 
Queen of Scots — Continued Flight of the Refugees from Flanders — Defeat 
of the Sacred Armada — The Reigns of Philip II. and Elizabeth con- 
trasted ......... 77-94 

CHAPTER V. 

SETTLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES OF THE PROTESTANT REFUGEES 

IN BRITAIN. 

Early English Industry — The Woollen-manufacture — Extensive Immigrations 
of Flemish Protestant Artizans— Landings at Sandwich, Rye, and Dover — 
Their Settlement at Sandwich — Cloth-making and Gardening introduced 
The Flemings in London — Their Industries— Dyeworks at Bow — Native 
Jealousy— The Flemish Merchants — Numbers of the Immigrants — Settle- 
ment at Norwich — Protected by Queen Elizabeth — Establishment of the 
Cloth-manufacture — Flemish Lace-makers — Workers in Iron and Steel — 
Fishing Settlement at Yarmouth — Drainers of the Fen-lands — Settlements 
in Ireland — Flemings in Scotland — Reactionary Policy of Charles I. 
summarily checked ...... 95-130 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



CHAPTER VI. 

EARLY WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES IN ENGLAND. 

Desire of the Refugees for Freedom of Worship — The first Walloon and French 
Churches in London — Dutch Church in Austin Friars — French Church 
in Threadneedle Street — Churches at Sandwich, Eye, Norwich — "God's 
House" at Southampton — Register of their Church — Their Fasts and 
Thanksgivings — Walloon Church at Canterbury — Memorial of the Re- 
fugees — The Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral — The Lady Chapel — 
Occupation of the Undercroft by the Walloons — The French Church still 
in Canterbury Cathedral .... Pages 131-150 

CHAPTER VII. 

RENEWAL OF THE PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE — REVOCATION OF 
THE EDICT OF NANTES. 

Assassination of Henry IV. — Marie de Medicis — Renewal of Civil War in 
France — Cardinal Richelieu — Siege of Rochelle — The Huguenots suppressed 
as a Political Body — Edict of Pardon — Loyalty of the Huguenots — Their 
Industry — Their Manufactures — Their Integrity as Merchants — Colbert — 
Absolutism of Louis XIV. — His Ambition — His Extravagance — His Enmity 
to the Huguenots — The Persecution renewed — Emigration prohibited — 
Cruel Edicts of Louis — His Amours and "Conversion" — Madame de 
Maintenon — Attempt to purchase Huguenot Consciences — Abduction of 
Protestant Children — The Dragonnades — Wholesale Conversions — The 
Protestant Churches destroyed — Incident at Saintonge — Dragonnades in 
Beam — Louis XIV. revokes the Edict of Nantes, and marries Madame 
de Maintenon ...... 151-182 

CHAPTER VIII. 

RENEWED FLIGHT OF THE HUGUENOTS FROM FRANCE. 

Rejoicings at Rome on the Revocation of the Edict — Bossuet's and Massillon's 
praises of Louis XIV. — Consequences of the Revocation — The Military 
Jacquerie — Demolition of Protestant Churches — Employment of the 
Huguenots proscribed — Pursued beyond Death — M. de Chenevix — Con- 
version or Flight — Escape of Literary and Scientific Men — Schomberg, 
Ruvigny, Duquesne — The Banished Pastors — Historical Significance of 
the Exodus — General Flight of the Huguenots — Closing of the Frontier — 
Capture and Punishment of the Detected — Flight in Disguise — Flight of 



xii 



CONTENTS. 



Women — Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac — The Captured condemned to the 
Galleys — Louis de Marolles — John Huber — The Flight by Sea — Count de 
Marance — The Lord of Castelfranc — The Misses Eahoteau — Case of a 
French Gentlewoman Refugee — Fumigation of Ships' Holds — Numbers 
of the Fugitives from France — A Death-blow given to French In- 
dustry ...... Pages 183-207 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE HUGUENOTS AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688. 

The Countries of the Refuge — The Asylum of Geneva — The Huguenots in 
Switzerland ; in Brandenburg and Germany — Holland " The Great Ark 
of the Fugitives " — Eminent Refugees in the Low Countries — Their Hos- 
pitable Reception by the Dutch — Refugee Soldiers and Sailors — "William, 
Prince of Orange : His Relation to the English Throne — The Stuart Kings 
and the Protestant Refugees — Accession of James II. : Compared with 
Louis XIV. — Attempts to suppress Protestantism — Popular Reaction — 
William of Orange invited over to England — French Huguenot Officers 
and Soldiers in the Dutch Army — Marshal Schomberg . 208-235 

CHAPTER X. 

DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET HIS ESCAPE FROM FRANCE INTO 

HOLLAND. 

Dumont de Bostaquet, a Protestant Gentleman of Normandy : His Church at 
Lindeboeuf demolished — Dragonnades in Normandy — Scenes at Rouen — 
Soldiers quartered in Protestant Families — De Bostaquet promises Abjura- 
tion — His Family pretend to abjure — They meditate Flight from France 
— Attempted Escape — Journey to the Sea-coast — Attacked by the Coast- 
guard — De Bostaquet wounded — His Flight through Picardy, and Suffer- 
ings — Refuge in Holland . . . . 236-253 

CHAPTER XL 

DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND — THE IRISH CAMPAIGNS OF 1689-90. 

Expedition of "William of Orange to England — The Flotilla sets sail — Voyage 
along the English Coast — Landing at Torbay — Advance to Exeter and 
London — Revolution of 168S — The Exiles in London — The Marquis de 
Ruvigny at Greenwich— De Bostaquet' s Family in England — Hugue- 
not Regiments sent into Ireland — The Irish Campaign of 1689 — 



CONTENTS. 



Xlll 



Losses of the Army at Dundalk — Landing of James IT. in Ireland with a 
French Army — Huguenot Regiments recruited in Switzerland — William 
III. takes the Field in Person — Campaign of 1690 — Battle of the Boyne 
— Death of Marshal Schomberg . . . Pages 254-268 

CHAPTER XII. 

HUGUENOT OFFICERS IN THE BRITISH SERVICE. 

Henry, Second Marquis de Ruvigny, distinguishes himself at the Battle of 
Aughrim, and is created Earl of Galway — War in Savoy — Earl of Galway 
placed in Command — Appointed Lord Justice in Ireland — Founding of 
Portarlington — Earl of Galway takes Command of the Army in Spain — 
Bravery of the Huguenot Soldiers — Jean Cavalier, the Camisard Leader — 
The War of the Blouses — Cavalier enters the Service of William III. — 
His Desperate Valour at the Battle of Almanza in Spain — Made Governor 
of Jersey and Major-General — Rapin-Thoyras, the Soldier-Historian — John 
de Bodt, the Engineer — Field- Marshal Lord Ligonier — The Huguenot 
Sailors— The Admirals Gambier .... 269-286 

CHAPTER XIII. 

HUGUENOT SETTLERS IN ENGLAND MEN OF SCIENCE AND 

LEARNING. 

The Huguenots Refugees for Liberty — The Emigration a Protest against In- 
tellectual and Religious Tyranny — Eminent Refugees — Solomon de Caus 
— Denis Papin, his Scientific Eminence — Dr. Desaguliers — Abraham De 
Moivre — Refugee Literati— Refugee Pastors : Abbadie ; Saurin ; Allix ; 
Pineton, his Escape from France — Refugee Graduates of Oxford — The 
Du Moulins — James Capell — Claude de la Mothe — Armand du Bour- 
dieu ........ 287-312 

CHAPTER XIV. 

HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND MEN OF INDUSTRY. 

Flight of the Manufacturing Class from France — Districts from which they 
chiefly came — Money brought by them into England — Measures taken for 
the relief of the Destitute — French Relief Committee — The Huguenots 
self-helping and helpful of each other — Their Benefit Societies — Their 
settlements in Spitalfields and other parts of London — Introduce new 
Branches of Industry from France — Establishment of the Silk-manufac- 



XIV 



CONTENTS. 



ture — Silk Stocking Trade — Glass-works — Paper-mills — The De Portal 
Family — Henry de Portal, the Paper-maker — Manufactures at Canter- 
bury, Norwich, and Ipswich — Lace-making — Refugee Industry in Scot- 
land . . . . . . . Pages 313-339 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND. 

Large number of Refugee Churches in London — French Church of Thread- 
needle Street — Church of the Savoy — Swallow Street Church, Piccadilly 
— French Churches in Spitalfields — Churches in Suburban Districts — The 
Malthouse Church, Canterbury — "God's House," Southampton — French 
Churches at Bristol, Plymouth, Stonehouse, Dartmouth, and Exeter — 
Church at Tkorpe-le-Soken, Essex — Gradual Decadence of the Churches 
— Sermon of the Rev. M. Bourdillon — Founding of the French Hospital 
— Governors and Directors of the Institution . . 340-356 

CHAPTER XVI. 

HUGUENOT SETTLE3IENTS IN IRELAND. 

Attempts to establish the Linen-trade in Ireland by Refugees — The Duke of 
Ormond — Efforts of "William III. to promote Irish Industry — Refugee 
Colony at Dublin — Settlement at Lisburn, near Belfast — Louis Crommelin 
appointed "Overseer of Royal Linen Manufactory of Ireland" — His 
Labours crowned with Success — Peter Goyer — Settlements at Kilkenny and 
Cork — Life and Adventures of James Fontaine in England and Ireland — ■ 
Settlement at Youghal — Refugee Colony at Waterford — The French Town 
of Portarlington : its Inhabitants and their Descendants . 357-388 

CHAPTER XVII. 

DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES. 

The Descendants of the Refugee Flemings and French still recognisable in 
England — Changes of Name by the Flemings— The Des Bouveries Family — 
Hugessens — Houblons— Eminent Descendants of Flemish Refugees — The 
Grote Family — Changes of French Names — Names still preserved — The 
Queen's Descent from a Huguenot — The Trench Family — Peers descended 
from Huguenots — Peerages of Taunton, Eversley, and Romilly — The 
Lefevres — Family of Romilly — Baronets descended from Huguenots — 
Members of Parliament — Eminent Scholars : Archdeacon Jortin, Maturin, 



CONTENTS. 



xv 



Dutens, Rev. William Komaine — Eminent Lawyers descended from 
Refugees — Eminent Literary Men of the same Origin — The Handloom- 
weavers of Spitalfields — The Dollonds — Lewis Paul, Inventor of Spinning 
by Rollers — Migration from Spitalfields — The last Persecutions in France — 
The Descendants of the Huguenot Refugees become British. . .Pages 389-432 



Effects of the Persecutions in Flanders and France — Suppression of Protest- 
antism and Liberty — Disappearance of Great Men in France after the 
Revocation — Triumph of the Jesuits — Aggrandisement of the Church — 
Hunger and Emptiness of the People — Extinction of Religion — The Church 
assailed by Voltaire — Persecution of the Clergy — The Reign of Terror — 
Flight of the Nobles and Clergy from France into Germany and England 
— The Dragonnades of the Huguenots repeated in the Xoyades of the 
Royalists — Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette the Victims of Louis XIV. — 
Relation of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes to the French Revolu- 
tion — Conclusion ...... 433-448 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



CONCLUSION THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



APPENDIX. 



I. Early Settlement of Foreign Artizans in England 
II. Registers of French Protestant Churches in England 
III. Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants . 



451-466 



466-495 



496-521 



I XPF.X 



523-530 



THE HUGUENOTS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

ENWEXTION OF FEIXTIX& — EISE OF THE HUGUENOTS. 

Of all inventions, probably none has exercised a greater 
influence upon modern civilisation than that of print- 
ing. "While it has been the mother and preserver of 
many other inventions which have changed the face 
of society, it has also afforded facilities for the inter- 
course of mind with mind — of living men with each 
other, as well as with the thinkers of past generations 
— which have evoked an extraordinary degree of 
mental activity, and exercised a powerful influence on 
the development of modern history. 

Although letters were diligently cidtivated long 
before the invention of printing, and many valuable 
books existed in manuscript, and seminaries of learn- 
ing flourished in all civilised countries, knowledge was 
for the most part confined to a comparatively small 
number of persons. The manuscripts which contained 
the treasured thoughts of the ancient poets, scholars, 
and men of science, were so scarce and dear that 

B 



2 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



they were frequently sold for double or treble their 
weight in gold. In some cases they were considered 
so precious that they were conveyed by deed like 
landed estate. In the thirteenth century a manu- 
script copy of the Romance of the Rose was sold at 
Paris for over £33 sterling. A copy of the Bible cost 
from £40 to £60 for the writing only, for it took an 
expert copyist about ten months' labour to make one.* 
Such being the case, it will be obvious that books 
were then for the most part the luxury of the rich, 
and comparatively inaccessible to the great body of the 
people. 

Even the most advanced minds could exercise but 
little influence on their age. They were able to ad- 
dress themselves to only a very limited number of 
their fellow-men, and in most cases their influence 
died with them. The results of study, investigation, 
and experience remaining unrecorded, knowledge was 



* It is difficult to form an accurate 
idea of the relative value of money to 
commodities in the thirteenth century, 
compared with present prices ; but 
it may be mentioned that in 1445 
(according to Fleetwood's Chronicon 
Pretiosum, 1707) the price of wheat 
was 4s. 6d. the quarter, and oats 2s. ; 
bullocks and heifers sold for 5s., and 
sheep for 2s. 5^d. each. In 1460 a 
gallon of ale sold for a penny, which 
was also the ordinary day's wage of 
labourers and servants, in addition to 
meat and drink. As late as 1558, a 
good sheep sold for 2s. lOd. In 1414 
the ordinary salary of chaplains was 
five or six marks a-year (the mark 



being equal to 13s. 4d.), and of resi- 
dent parish-priests eight marks ; so 
that for about £5 : 10s. a-year a single 
man was expected to live cleanly and 
decently. These prices multiplied by 
about twelve would give something ap- 
proaching their equivalent in modern 
money. It is true, manuscripts were 
in many cases sold at fancy prices, as 
books are now. But copying had be- 
come a regular branch of business : 
at Milan, in the fourteenth century, 
about fifty persons earned their living 
by it. The ordinary charge for mak- 
ing a copy of the Bible was 80 Bo- 
logna livres, or equal to 53 gold 
florins . 



CHAP. I. 



POWER OF PRINTING. 



3 



for the most part transmitted orally, and often inac- 
curately. Thus many arts and inventions discovered 
by individuals became lost to the race, and a point of 
social stagnation was arrived at, beyond which further 
progress seemed improbable. 

This state of things was entirely changed by the 
introduction of printing. It gave a new birth to 
letters ; it enabled books to be perpetually renovated 
and multiplied at a comparatively moderate cost, and 
to diffuse the light which they contained over a 
much larger number of minds. It gave a greatly 
increased power to the individual and to society, by 
facilitating the intercourse of educated men of all 
countries with each other. Active thinkers were no 
longer restricted by the limits of their town or parish, 
or even of their nation or epoch ; and the knowledge 
that their printed words would have an effect where 
their spoken words did not reach, could not fail to 
stimulate the highest order of minds into action. The 
permanency of invention and discovery was thus 
secured; the most advanced point of one generation 
became the starting-point of the next ; and the results 
of the labours of one age were carried forward into all 
the ages that succeeded."" 

The invention of printing, like most others, 

* See Babbage, Ninth Bridge- be magnified, which, as ships, pass 

water Treatise, 52-6. Lord Bacon through the vast seas of time, and 

observes : "If the invention of ships make ages so distant to participate of 

was thought so noble, which carrieth the wisdom, illuminations, and in- 

riches and commodities from place to ventions, the one of the other." 
place, how much more are letters to 



4 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



struggled slowly and obscurely into life. The wooden 
blocks or tablets of Laurence Coster were superseded 
by separate types of the same material. Gutenberg 
of Mentz next employed large types cut in metal, 
from which the impressions were taken. And, finally, 
Gutenberg's associate Schceffer cut the characters in a 
matrix, after w T hich the types were cast, and thus 
completed the art as it now remains. 

It is a remarkable circumstance, that the first book 
which Gutenberg undertook to print with his cut 
metal types was a folio edition of the Bible in the 
Latin Vulgate, consisting of 641 leaves. When the 
immense labour involved in carrying out such a 
work is considered — the cutting by hand, with im- 
perfect tools, of each separate type required for the 
setting of a folio page, and the difficulties to be over- 
come with respect to vellum, paper, ink, and press- 
work — one cannot but feel astonished at the bold- 
ness of the undertaking ; nor can it be matter of 
surprise that the execution of the work occupied 
Gutenberg and his associates a period of from seven to 
eight years* 



* The first Bible printed by 
Gutenberg is known as the Mazarin 
Bible, from a copy of it having been 
found in Cardinal Mazarin's library 
at Paris about the middle of last 
century. Johnson, in his Typo- 
grapJiia (p. 17), says: "It was 
printed with large cut metal types, 
and published in 1450." Others give 
the date of publication as five years 
later, in 1455. Mr. Hallam inclines 



to think that it was printed with 
cast-metal types ; but there is reason 
to believe that the casting of the types 
by a matrix was invented at a subse- 
quent period. Mr. Hallam says : 
"It is a very striking circumstance 
that the high-minded inventors of this 
great art tried at the very outset so 
bold a flight as the printing an entire 
Bible, and executed it with astonish- 
ing success. It was Minerva leaping 



CHAP. I. 



GUTENBERG AND SCHCEFFER. 



5 



We do not, however, suppose that Gutenberg and 
his associates were induced to execute this first printed 
Bible through any more lofty motive than that of earn- 
ing a considerable sum of money by the enterprise. 
They were, doubtless, tempted to undertake it by the 
immense prices for which manuscript copies of the Bible 
then sold ; and they merely sought to produce, by one 
set of operations, a number of duplicates in imitation 
of the written character, which they hoped to be able 
to sell at the manuscript prices. But, as neither 
Gutenberg nor Schceffer were rich men, and as the 
work involved great labour and expense while in pro- 
gress, they found it necessary to invite some capitalist 
to join them ; and hence their communication of the 
secret to John Faust, the wealthy goldsmith of Mentz, 
who agreed to join them in their venture, and supply 
them with the necessary means for carrying out the 
undertaking. 

The first edition of the printed Bible having been 
disposed of, without the secret having transpired, 
Faust and Schceffer brought out a second edition 
in 1462, which they again offered for sale at the 



on earth in her divine strength and were cast in a matrix. We may see 
radiant armour, ready at the moment in imagination this venerable and 
of her nativity to subdue and destroy splendid volume leading up the 
her enemies. The Mazarin Bible is crowded myriads of its followers, and 
printed, some copies on vellum, some imploring, as it were, a blessing on 
on paper of choice quality, with the new art, by dedicating its first- 
strong, black, and tolerably hand- fruits to the service of Heaven." — 
some characters, but with some want Literary History, edition 1864, pp. 
of uniformity, which has led, perhaps 156-7. 
Unreasonably, to doubt whether they 



6 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



chap. r. 



manuscript prices. Faust carried a number of copies 
to Paris to dispose of, and sold several of them for 
500 or 600 crowns, the price then paid for manu- 
script Bibles. But great was the astonishment of the 
Parisian copyists when Faust, anxious to dispose of 
the remainder, lowered his price to 60 and then to 
30 crowns ! The copies sold having been compared 
with each other, were found to be exactly uniform ! 
It was immediately inferred that these Bibles must 
be produced by magic, as such an extraordinary 
uniformity w T as considered entirely beyond the reach 
of human contrivance. Information was forthwith 
given to the police against Faust as a magician. His 
lodgings were searched, when a number of Bibles were 
found there complete. The red ink, with which they 
were embellished, was supposed to be his blood. It 
was seriously believed that he was in league with the 
devil ; and he was carried off to prison, from which he 
was only delivered upon making a full revelation of 
the secret.* 

Several other books, of less importance, were 
printed by Gutenberg and Schceffer at Mentz : two 
editions of the Psalter, a Catholicon, a Codex Psalmo- 
rum, and an edition of Cicero's Offices ; but they were 
printed in such small numbers, and were sold at such 
high prices, that, like the manuscripts which they 
superseded, they were only purchasable by kings, 

* Such, is supposed to be the origin of the tradition of " The Devil 
and Dr. Faustus." It is believed that Faust died of the plague at Paris 
in 1466. 



CHAP. I. 



PRINTING OF THE BIBLE. 



7 



nobles, collegiate bodies, and rich ecclesiastical estab- 
lishments. It was only after the lapse of many years, 
when the manufacture of paper had become improved, 
and Schceffer had invented his method of cutting the 
characters in a matrix, and casting the type in 
quantity, that books could be printed in such forms 
as to be accessible to the great body of the people. 

In the meanwhile, the printing establishments of 
Gutenberg and Schceffer were for a time broken up 
by the s?ck and plunder of Mentz by the Archbishop 
Aclolphus in 1462, when, their workmen becoming 
dispersed, and being no longer bound to secrecy, they 
shortly after carried with them the invention of the 
new art into nearly every country in Europe. 

Wherever the printers set up their trade, they 
usually began by issuing an edition of the Latin Bible. 
There was no author class in those days to supply 
" copy " enough to keep their presses going. Accord- 
ingly, they fell back upon the ancient authors, issu- 
ing editions of Livy, Horace, Sallust, Cicero, and 
portions of Aristotle, with occasional devotional 
manuals ; but their favourite book, most probably 
because it was the one most in demand, was the Bible. 
Only twenty-four books were published in Germany 
during the ten years that followed the sack of Mentz ; 
but of these five were Latin and two were German 
Bibles. Translators were at the same time busily 
engaged upon it in different countries, and year by 
year the Bible became more accessible. Thus an 
Italian version appeared in 1471, a Bohemian in 



8 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



1475, a Dutch in 1477, a French in 1477, and a 
Spanish (Valencian) in 1478 * 

The Bible, however, continued a comparatively 
scarce and dear book ; being little known to the 
clergy generally, and still less to the people. By 
many of the former it was regarded with suspicion, 
and even with hostility. At length, the number of 
editions of the Bible which were published in Germany, 
as if heralding the approach of the coming Keforma- 
tion, seriously alarmed the church; and in 1486 the 
Archbishop of Mentz placed the printers of that city, 
which had been the cradle of the printing-press, under 
strict censorship. Twenty-five years later, Pope Alex- 
ander VI. issued a bull prohibiting the printers of 
Cologne, Mentz, Treves, and Magdeburg, from publish- 
ing any books without the express licence of their 
archbishops. Although these measures were directed 
against the printing of religious works generally, they 
were more particularly directed against the publica- 
tion of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.f 



* Lord Spencer's famous library- 
contains twenty editions of the Bible 
in Latin, printed between the appear- 
ance of the Mazarin Bible in 1450-5 
and the year 148.0 inclusive. It also 
contains nine editions of the German 
Bible printed before the year 1495. — 
See Edwards on Libraries, p. 430. 

+ Hallam — Literary History, ed. 
1864, i. 254. No translation of the 
Bible was permitted to appear in 
England during the fifteenth century ; 
and the reading of Wycliffe's transla- 
tion was prohibited under penalty of 



excommunication and death. Tyn- 
dale's translation of the New Testa- 
ment was first printed at Antwerp. 
The government tried to suppress the 
book, and many copies were seized 
and burnt. John Tyndale, a merchant 
of London, brother of the translator, 
having been convicted of reading the 
New Testament, was sentenced by 
the excellent Sir Thomas More " that 
he should be set upon a horse with 
his face to the tail, and have a paper 
pinned upon his head, and many 
sheets of New Testaments sewn to 



chap. i. PUBLICATION OF THE BIBLE. 







The printers, nevertheless, continued to print the 
Bible, regardless of these prohibitions — the Old Testa- 
ment in Hebrew, the new in Greek, and both in Latin, 
German, French, and other modern languages. Find- 
ing that the reading of the Bible was extending, the 
priests began to inveigh against the practice from 
the pulpit. " They have now found out," said a French 
monk, " a new language called Greek ; we must care- 
fully guard ourselves against it. That language will be 
the mother of all sorts of heresies. I see in the hands 
of a great number of persons a book written in this 
language, called 'The New Testament;' it is a book 
full of brambles, with vipers in them. As to the He- 
brew, whoever learns that becomes a Jew at once."* 

The fears of the priests increased as they saw their 
flocks becoming more intent upon reading the Scrip- 
tures, or hearing them read, than attending mass ; and 
they were especially concerned at the growing disposi- 
tion of the people to call in question the infallibility of 
the church and the sacred character of the priesthood. 
It was every day becoming clearer to them that if the 
people were permitted to resort to books, and pray to 
God direct in their vulgar tongue, instead of through 
the priests in Latin, the authority of the mass would 
fall, and the church itself would be endangered. t A 

his cloak, to be afterwards thrown + Lord Herbert, in his Life of 
into a great fire kindled in Cheap- Henry VII. (p. 147), supposed Car- 
side, and then pay to the king a fine dinal Wolsey to have stated the 
which should ruin him.'' effects of printing to the pope in the 
* Sismondi — Histoire cles Fran- following terms : — " That his holi- 
cais, xvi. 364. ness could not be ignorant what dc- 



10 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



most forcible expression was given to this view by the 
Vicar of Croydon in a sermon preached by him at 
Paul's Cross, in which he boldly declared that " we 
must root out printing, or printing will root out us." 

But printing could not be rooted out, any more 
than the hand of Time could be put back. This in- 
vention, unlike every other, contained within itself a 
self-preserving power which ensured its perpetuation. 
Its method had become known, and was recorded by 
itself. Printed books were now part of the inheritance 
of the human race ; and though they might be burnt, 
as vast numbers of Bibles were, so that they might be 
kept out of the hands of the people, so long as a single 
copy remained it was not lost, but was capable of im- 
mediate restoration and of infinite multiplication. 

The intense interest which the publication of the 
Bible excited, and the emotion it raised in the minds 
of those who read it, are matters of history. At this 



verse effects the new invention of 
printing had produced ; for it had 
brought in and restored boohs and 
learning ; so together it hath been 
the occasion of those sects and schisms 
which daily appear in the world, but 
especially in Germany ; where men 
begin now to call in question the pre- 
sent faith and tenets of the church, 
and to examine how far religion is 
departed from its primitive institu- 
tion. And that, which particularly 
was most to be lamented, they had 
exhorted lay and ordinary men to 
read the Scriptures, and to pray in 
their vulgar tongue ; and if this was 
suffered, besides all other dangers, the 



common people at last might come to 
believe that there was not so much 
use of the clergy. For if men were 
persuaded once they could make their 
own way to God, and that prayers in 
their native and ordinary language 
might pierce heaven as well as Latin, 
how much would the authority of the 
mass fall ! For this purpose, since 
printing could not be put down, it 
was best to set up learning against 
learning ; and by introducing all per- 
sons to dispute, to suspend the laity 
between fear and controversy. This 
at most would make them attentive 
to their superiors and teachers." 



CHAP. r. 



READING OF THE BIBLE. 



11 



day, when Bibles are common in almost every house- 
hold, it is perhaps difficult to appreciate the deep feel- 
ing of awe and reverence with which men for the first 
time" perused the sacred volume. We have become 
so familiar with it, that we are apt to look upon 
it merely as one amongst many books — as part of the 
current literature of the day, or as a record of ancient 
history, to be checked off by the arithmetician and 
analysed by the critic. 

It was far different in those early times, when the 
Bible was rare and precious. Printing had brought 
forth the Book, which had lain so long silent in manu- 
script beneath the dust of old libraries, and laid it 
before the people, to be read by them in their own 
tongue. It was known to be the very charter and 
title-deed of Christianity — the revelation of God's own 
will to man ; and now, to read it, or hear it read, was 
like meeting God face to face, and listening to His 
voice speaking directly to them. 

At first it could only be read to the people ; and 
in the English cathedrals, where single copies were 
placed, chained to a niche, eager groups gathered round 
to drink in its living truths. But as the art of print- 
ing improved, and copies of the Bible became multi- 
plied in portable forms, it could then be taken home 
into the study or the chamber, and read and studied in 
secret. It was found to be an ever-fresh gushing 
spring of thought, welling up, as it were, from the In- 
finite. No wonder that men pondered over it with 
reverence, and read it with thanksgiving ! No wonder 



12 INVENTION OF PRINTING. chap. i. 



that it moved their hearts, influenced their thoughts, 
gave a colour to their familiar speech,* and imparted a 
bias to their whole life ! 

To the thoughtful, the perusal of the Bible gave 
new views of life and death; showed them man, 
standing on the narrow isthmus of time which divides 
the eternity of the past from the eternity of the future 
— a weak, helpless, and sinful creature, yet the object 
of God's unceasing care. Its effect was to make those 
who pondered its lessons more solemn ; it made the 
serious more earnest, and impressed them with a 
deeper sense of responsibility and duty. To the poor, 
the suffering, and the struggling, it was the aurora of 
a new world. With this Book in their hands, what to 
them were the afflictions of time, which were but for a 
moment, working out for them " a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory ?" 

It was the accidental sight of a copy of one of 
Gutenberg's Bibles in the library of the convent of 
Erfurt, where Luther was in training for a monk, that 
fixed his destioy for life.t He opened it, and read 



* The perusal and study of the 
Bible in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries exercised an important in- 
fluence on literature in all countries. 
The great writers of the period uncon- 
sciously adopted Bible phraseology to 
a large extent— the thoughts of Scrip- 
ture clothing themselves in language 
which became habitual to all who 
studied it closely. This tendency is 
noticeable in the early foreign as well 
as English writers — in Latimer, Brad- 



ford, Jewell, More, Brown, Bacon, 
Milton, and others. Coleridge has 
said, ' ' Intense study of the Bible will 
keep any writer from being vulgar in 
point of style." 

t "I was twenty years old," said 
Luther, "before I had even seen the 
Bible. I had no notion that there 
existed any other gospels or epistles 
than those in the service. At last I 
came across a Bible in the library at 
Erfurt, and used often to read it to 



INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE. 13 



with inexpressible delight the history of Hannah and 
her son Samuel. " God ! " he murmured, " could 
I but have one of these books, I would ask no other 
treasure !" A great revolution forthwith took place 
in his soul. He read, and studied, and meditated, 
until he fell seriously ill. Dr. Staupitz, a man of 
rank in the church, was then inspecting the convent 
at Erfurt, in which Luther had been for two years. 
He felt powerfully attracted towards the young monk, 
and had much confidential intercourse with him. Be- 
fore leaving, Staupitz presented Luther with a copy of 
the Bible — a Bible all to himself, which he could take 
with him to his cell and study there. " For several 
years," said Luther afterwards, "I read the whole 
Bible twice in every twelvemonth. It is a great and 
powerful tree, each word of which is a mighty branch ; 
each of these branches have I shaken, so desirous was 
I to learn what fruit they every one of them bore, 
and what they could give me."* 

This Bible of Luther's was, however, in the Latin 
Vulgate, a language known only to the learned. Seve- 
ral translations had been printed in Germany by the 
end of the fifteenth century; but they were unsatisfac- 
tory versions, unsuited for popular reading, and were 



Dr. Staupitz with still increasing with the Bible ? Eather read the 

wonder. — Tischreden — Table-Talk ancient doctors who have collected 

(Frankfort, 1568), p. 255. And again, for you all its marrow and honey. 

"Dr. Usinger, an Augustan monk, The Bible itself is the cause of all our 

who was my preceptor at the convent troubles." — Tischreden, p. 7. 
of Erfurt, used to say to me, "Ah, 

brother Martin ! why trouble yourself * Tiscureden, p. 311. 



14 INVENTION OF PRINTING. chap. i. 



comparatively little known. One of Luther's first 
thoughts, therefore, was to translate the Bible into the 
popular speech, so that the people at large might 
have free access to the unparalleled book. Accord- 
ingly, in 1521, he began the translation of the New 
Testament during his imprisonment in what he called 
his Patmos, the castle of Wartburg. It was com- 
pleted and published in the following year ; and two 
years later his Old Testament appeared. 

None valued more than Luther did the invention 
of printing. " Printing," said he, " is the latest and 
greatest gift by which God enables us to advance the 
things of the gospel." Printing was, indeed, one of 
the prime agents of the Eeformation. The ideas had 
long been born, but printing gave them wings. Had 
the writings of Luther and his fellow-labourers been 
confined only to such copies as could have been made 
by hand, they would have remained few in number, 
been extremely limited in their effects, and could 
easily have been suppressed and destroyed by autho- 
rity. But the printing-press enabled them to circu- 
late by thousands all over Germany* Luther was 
the especial favourite of the printers and booksellers. 

* At Nuremberg, at Strasburg, good news. Worthy Hans Sachs 
even at Mentz, there was a constant raised himself above his wonted corn- 
struggle for Luther's least pamphlets, monplace ; he left his shoe half-made, 
The sheet, yet wet, was brought from and with his most high-flown verses, 
the press under some one's cloak, and his best productions, he sang, in 
passed from shop to shop. The under tones, "The Nightingale of 
pedantic bookmen of the German Wittenberg, " and the song was taken 
trades unions, the poetical tinmen, up and resounded all over the land. — 
the literary shoemakers, devoured the Michelet — Life of Luther, 70, 71. 



CHAP. I. 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 



15 



The former took pride in bringing out his books with 
minute care, and the latter in circulating them. A 
large body of ex-monks lived by travelling about and 
selling them all over Germany. They also flew 
abroad, into Switzerland, Bohemia, France, and 
England* 

The printing of the Bible was also carried on with 
great activity in the Low Countries. Besides versions 
in French and Flemish for the use of the people in the 
Walloon provinces, where the new views extensively 
prevailed, various versions in foreign tongues were 
printed for exportation abroad. Thus Tyndale, unable 
to get his New Testament printed in England, where 
its perusal was forbidden, had the first edition printed 
at Antwerp in 1526,t as well as two subsequent 
editions at the same place. Indeed Antwerp seems at 



* Works printed in Germany or 
in the Flemish provinces, where at 
first the administration connived at 
the new religion, were imported into 
England, and read with that eager- 
ness and delight which always com- 
pensate the risk of forbidden studies. — 
Hallam — Hist, of England, i. p. 82. 

t A complete edition of the Eng- 
lish Bible, translated partly by Tyn- 
dale and partly by Coverdale, was 
printed at Hamburg in 1535 ; and a 
second edition, edited by John Eogers, 
under the name of "Thomas Mat- 
thew," was printed at Marlboro w in 
Hesse in 1537. Tyndale suffered 
martyrdom at Vilvorde, near Brussels, 
in 1536, yet he died in the midst of 
victory, for before his death no fewer 
than fourteen editions of the New 



Testament, several of them of two 
thousand copies each, had been 
printed ; and at the very time that 
he died the first edition of the Scrip- 
tures printed in England was pass- 
ing through the press. Cranmer's 
Bible, so called because revised by 
Cranmer, was published in 1539-40. 
In the year 1542, Henry VIII. issued 
a proclamation directing a large Bible 
to be set up in every parish- church, 
while at the same time Bibles were 
authorised to be publicly sold. The 
Spencer collection contains copies of 
fifteen English editions of the Bible 
printed between 1536 and 1581 ; show- 
ing that the printing-press was by that 
time actively at work in England. 
Wycliffe's translation, though made 
in 13S0, was not printed until 1731. 



1G INVENTION OF PRINTING. chap. i. 



that time to have been the head-quarters of Bible- 
printing. No fewer than thirteen editions of the 
Bible and twenty-four editions of the New Testament, 
in the Flemish or Dutch language, were printed there 
within the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, besides various other editions in English, French, 
Danish, and Spanish.* 

An eager demand for the Scriptures had by this 
time sprung up in France. Several translations of 
portions of the Bible appeared there towards the 
end of the fifteenth century ; but these were all super- 
seded by a version of the entire Scriptures, printed at 
Antwerp, in successive portions, between the years 
1512 and 1530. This translation was the work of 
Jacques le Fevre or Faber, of Estaples, and it formed 
the basis of all subsequent editions of the French Bible. 

The effects were the same wherever the Book ap- 
peared, and was freely read by the people. It was 
followed by an immediate reaction against the super- 
stition, indifferentism, and impiety, which generally 
prevailed. There was a sudden awakening to a new 
religious life, and an anxious desire for a purer faith, 
less overlaid by the traditions, inventions, and corrup- 
tions, which impaired the efficacy, and obscured the 
simple beauty, of Christianity. The invention of print- 
ing had also its political effects ; and for men to be able 

* "There can be no sort of com- cal knowledge, considering the limited 

parison," says Mr. Hallam, "between extent of their language, and anything 

the number of these editions, and that could be found in the Protestant 

consequently the eagerness of the states of the empire." — Literary His- 

people of the Low Countries for bibli- tory, i. 387. 



CHAP. I. 



ECCLESIASTICAL ABUSES. 



17 



to read books, and especially the Scriptures, in the 
common tongue, was itself a revolution. It roused the 
hearts of the people in all lands, producing commotion, 
excitement, and agitation. Society became electric, 
and was stirred to its depths. The sentiment of Eight 
was created, and the long down-trodden peasants — 
along the Rhine, in Alsace, and Suabia — raised their 
cries on all sides, demanding freedom from serfdom, 
and to be recognised as Men. Indeed, this electric 
fervour and vehement excitement throughout society 
was one of the greatest difficulties that Luther had to 
contend with in guiding the Reformation in Germany 
to a successful issue. 

The ecclesiastical abuses, which had first evoked 
the indignation of Luther, were not confined to Ger- 
many, but prevailed all over Europe. There were 
Tetzels also in France, where indulgences were things 
of common traffic. Money must thus be raised, for 
the building of St. Peter's at Rome had to be paid 
for. Each sin had its price, each vice its tax. There 
was a regular tariff for peccadilloes of every degree, 
up to the greatest crimes* The Bible, it need 
scarcely be said, was at open war with this monstrous 
state of things ; and the more extensively it was read 
and its precepts became known, the more strongly 



* The well-known book entitled Pu Axsx—llistoire de la Reformation 

Taxes of the Roman Chancery sets Francaise, i. 15. The hook, it must 

forth the various crimes for which be added, is now repudiated by Eo- 

absolution might be given, and the man Catholics, though it was issued 

price charged in each case. Nume- from the Romish press, 
rous instances are quoted verbatim in 

C 



18 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



were these practices condemned. Hence the alarm 
occasioned at Eome by the rapid extension of the art 
of printing and the increasing circulation of the Bible. 
Hence also the prohibition of printing which shortly 
followed, and the burning of the printers who printed 
the Scriptures, as well as the persons who were found 
guilty of reading them. 

The first signs of the Eeformation in France showed 
themselves in the town of Meaux, about fifty miles 
north-east of Paris, and not far distant from the then 
Flemish frontier. It was a place full of working- 
people — mechanics, wool-carders, fullers, cloth -makers, 
and artizans. Their proximity to Flanders, and the 
similarity of their trade to that of the larger Flemish 
towns, occasioned a degree of intercourse between 
them, which doubtless contributed to the propagation 
of the new views at Meaux, where the hearts of the 
poor artizans were greatly moved by the tidings of 
the Gospel which reached them from the north. 

At the same time, men of learning in the church had 
long been meditating over the abuses which prevailed 
in it, and devising the best means for remedying them. 
Among the most earnest of these was Jacques Lefevre, 
a native of Etaples in Picardy. He was a man of 
great and acknowledged learning, one of the most 
distinguished professors in the university of Paris. 
The study of the Bible produced the same effect upon 
his mind that it had done on that of Luther ; but he 
was a man of far different temperament — gentle, 
retiring, and timid, though no less devoted to the cause 



CHAP. T. 



RE FORM A TION A T ME A UX. 



19 



of truth. He was, however, an old man of seventy ; his 
life was fast fleeting ; yet here was a world lying in 
wickedness around him. What he could do, he never- 
theless did. He translated the four Gospels into 
French in 1523 ; had them printed at Antwerp ; and 
put them into circulation. He found a faithful fol- 
lower in Guillaume Farel — a young, energetic, and 
active man — who abounded in those qualities in which 
the aged Lefevre was so deficient. Another coadjutor 
shortly joined them — no other than Guillaume Bri- 
connet, Count of Montbrun and Bishop of Meaux, who 
also became a convert to the new doctrines. 

The bishop, on taking charge of his diocese, had 
been shocked by the disorders which prevailed there, 
by the licentiousness of the clergy, and their general 
disregard for religious life and duty. As many of them 
were non-resident, he invited Lefevre, Farel, and others, 
to occupy their pulpits and preach to the people, 
the bishop preaching in his turn; and the people 
flocked to hear them. The bishop also distributed 
the four Gospels gratuitously among the poor, and 
very soon a copy was to be found in almost every 
workshop in Meaux. A reformation of manners shortly 
followed. Blasphemy, drunkenness, and disorder dis- 
appeared ; and the movement spread far and near. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the sup- 
porters of the old church were indifferent to these 
proceedings. At first they had been stunned by the 
sudden spread of the new views and the rapid increase 
of the Gospellers, as they were called, throughout the 



20 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



northern provinces ; but they speedily rallied from their 
stupor. They knew that power was on their side — the 
power of kings and parliaments, and their agents ; 
and these they loudly called to their help for the pur- 
pose of preventing the spread of heresy. At the same 
time, Eome, roused by her danger, availed herself of 
all methods for winning back her wandering children, 
by force if not by suasion. The Inquisition was armed 
with new powers ; and wherever heresy appeared, it 
was crushed, unsparingly, unpityingly. No matter 
what the rank or learning of the suspected heretic 
might be, he must satisfy the tribunal before which he 
was brought, or die at the stake. 

The priests and monks of Meaux, though mostly 
absentees, finding their revenues diminishing, appealed 
for help to the Sorbonne, the Faculty of Theology at 
Paris, and the Sorbonne called upon parliament at 
once to interpose with a strong hand. The result was, 
that the Bishop of Meaux was heavily fined, and he 
shrank thenceforward out of sight, and ceased to give 
further cause of offence. But his disciples were less 
pliant, and continued bold]y to preach the Gospel. 
Jean Leclerc was burnt alive at Metz, and Jacques 
Pavent and Louis de Berguin on the Place de G-reve at 
Paris. Far el escaped into Switzerland, and there 
occupied himself in printing copies of Lefevre's New 
Testament, thousands of which he caused to be dis- 
seminated throughout France by the hands of pedlars. 

The Sorbonne then proceeded to make war against 
books and the printers of them. Bibles and New 



CHAP. I. 



BURNING OF PRINTERS. 



21 



Testaments were seized wherever found, and burnt ; 
but more Bibles and Testaments seemed to rise, as if 
by magic, from their ashes. The printers who were 
convicted of printing Bibles were next seized and burnt. 
The Bourgeois de Paris* gives a detailed account of 
the human sacrifices offered up to ignorance and in- 
tolerance in that city during the six months ending 
June 1534, from which it appears that twenty men 
and one woman were burnt alive. One was a printer 
of the Hue St. Jacques, found guilty of having " printed 
the books of Luther." Another, a bookseller, was 
burnt for " having; sold Luther." In the be^inninff of 
the following year, the Sorbonne obtained from the 
king an ordinance, which was promulgated on the 26th 
of February 1535, for the suppression of printing ! 

But it was too late. The art was now full born, 
and could no more be suppressed than light, or air, or 
life. Books had become a public necessity, and sup- 
plied a great public want ; and every year saw them 
multiplying more abundantly. f 

The same scenes were enacted all over France, 



* Michelet says the Bourgeois de 
Taris (Paris, 1854) was not the publi- 
cation of a Protestant, which might 
he called in question, but of a " very 
zealous Catholic." — Histoire de France 
au Seizieme Steele, viii. p. 411. 

f It has been calculated (by 
Daunon, Petit, Eudel, Taillandier, and 
others) that by the end of the fifteenth 
century four millions of volumes had 
been printed, the greater part in folio ; 
and that between 1500 and 1536 



eighteen more millions of volumes had 
been printed. After that it is im- 
possible to number them. In 1533 
there had already been eighteen edi- 
tions of the German Bible printed at 
Wittemberg, thirteen at Augsburg, 
thirteen at Strasburg, twelve at Basle, 
and so on. Schceffer, in his Influence 
of Luther on Education, says that 
Luther's Catechism soon ran to 100,000 
copies. Printing was at the same 
time making rapid strides in France, 
England, and the Low Countries. 



22 



INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



CHAP. I. 



wherever the Bible had penetrated and found followers. 
In 1545, the massacre of the Yandois of Provence was 
perpetrated, accompanied by horrors which it is impos- 
sible to describe. This terrible persecution, however, 
did not produce its intended effect ; but, on the other 
hand, was followed by a strong reaction in the public 
mind against the fury of the persecutors. The king, 
Francis I., complained that his orders had been ex- 
ceeded ; but he was sick and almost dying at the time, 
and had not the strength to prosecute the assassins. 

There was, however, a lull for a time in the violence 
of the persecutions, during which the new views made 
rapid progress ; and men of rank, of learning, and of 
arms, ranged themselves on the side of " The Keligion." 
Then arose the Huguenots or French Protestants,"* 
who shortly became so numerous as to constitute a 
considerable power in the state, and to exercise, during 
the next hundred years, a most important influence on 
the political history of France. 

The origin of the term Huguenot is extremely 
obscure. It was at first applied to them as a nick- 
name, and, like the Gueux of Flanders, they assumed 
and bore it with pride. Some suppose the term to 
be derived from Huguon, a word used in Touraine to 
signify persons who walk at night in the streets — the 
early Protestants, like the early Christians, having 

* The followers of tlie new views name Protestant was not applied to 

called themselves at first Gospellers them until the end of the seventeenth 

(from their religion being based on century, that term origiiialby charac- 

the reading of the Gospel), Religion- tensing the disciples of the Lutheran 

aries, or Those of the Beligion. The Reformation in Germany. 



chap. r. FIRST INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. 



23 



chosen that time for their religious assemblies. Others 
are of opinion that it was derived from a French and 
faulty pronunciation of the German word Eidgenossen, 
or confederates, the name given to those citizens of 
Geneva who entered into an alliance with the Swiss 
cantons to resist the attempts of Charles III., Duke 
of Savoy, against their liberties. The confederates 
were called Eignots, and hence, probably, the deriva- 
tion of the word Huguenots. A third surmise is, that 
the word was derived from one Hugues, the name of a 
Genevese Calvinist. 

Further attempts continued to be made by Konie 
to check the progress of printing. In 1599, Pope Paul 
IY. issued the first Index Expurgatorius, containing 
a list of the books expressly prohibited by the Church. 
It included all Bibles printed in modern languages, 
of which forty-eight editions were enumerated ; while 
sixty-one printers were put under a general ban, and 
all works of every description issued from their presses 
were forbidden. Notwithstanding, however, these and 
similar measures, such as the wholesale burning of 
Bibles wherever found, the circulation of the Scriptures 
rapidly increased, and the principles of the Eeforma- 
tion more and more prevailed throughout all the 
northern nations. 



CHAPTEE II. 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. 

At the time when the remarkable movement we have 
rapidly sketched was sweeping round the frontiers 
of France, from Switzerland to Brabant — and men 
were everywhere listening with eagerness to the pro- 
mulgation of the new ideas — there was wandering 
along the Ehine a poor artizan, then obscure, but 
afterwards famous, who was seeking to earn a living 
by the exercise of his trade. He could glaze windows, 
mend furniture, paint a little on glass, draw portraits 
rudely, gild and colour images of the Virgin, or clo 
any sort of work requiring handiness and dexterity. 
On an emergency he would even undertake to measure 
land, and was ready to turn his hand to anything 
that might enable him to earn a living, and at the 
same time add to his knowledge and experience. 
This wandering workman was no other than Bernard 
Palissy — afterwards the natural philosopher, the 
chemist, the geologist, and the artist — but more 
generally known as the great Potter. 

Fortunately for our present purpose, Palissy was 
also an author ; and though the works he left behind 



chap. ii. PAL/SSY'S " WA NDERSCHA FT. " 25 

liim are written in a quaint and simple style, it is 
possible to obtain from certain passages in them a 
more vivid idea of the times in which he lived, and 
of the trials and sufferings of the Gospellers, of whom 
he was one of the most illustrious, than from any 
other contemporary record. The life of Palissy, too, 
is eminently illustrative of his epoch ; and provided 
we can but accurately portray the life of any single 
man in relation to his epoch, then biography becomes 
history in its truest sense ; for history, after all, is but 
accumulated biography. 

From the writings of Palissy,* then, we gather the 
following facts regarding this remarkable man s life 
and career. He was born about the year 1510, at La 
Chapelle Biron, a poor village in Perigord, where his 
father brought him up to his own trade of a glazier. 
The boy was by nature quick and ingenious, with a 
taste for drawing, designing, and decoration, which he 
turned to account in painting on glass and decorating 
images for the village churches in his neighbour- 
hood. Desirous of improving himself at the same 
time that he earned his living, he resolved on travel- 
ling into other districts and countries, according to 
the custom of skilled workmen in those days. Ac- 
cordingly, so soon as his term of apprenticeship had 
expired, he set out upon his " wanderschaft," at about 
the age of twenty-one. He first went into the 



* (Euvres Completes de Bernard l'autenr ; avec des notes et une Notice 
Palissy, edition conforme anx textes Historique. Par Paul-Antoine Cap, 
originaux imprimes du vivant de Paris, 1844. 



26 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



country adjacent to the Pyrenees ; and his journey- 
ings in those mountain districts awoke in his mind 
that love for geology and natural history which 
he afterwards pursued with so much zeal. After 
settling for a time at Tarbes, in the High Pyrenees, 
he proceeded northward, through Languedoc, Dau- 
phiny, part of Switzerland, Alsace, the Duchies of 
Cleves and Luxemburg, and the provinces of the 
Lower Ehine, to Ardennes and Flanders. 

It will be observed that Palissy's line of travel 
lay precisely through the provinces in which the 
people had been most deeply moved by the recent 
revolt of Luther from Eome. In 1517 the Eeformer 
had publicly denounced the open sale of indulgences 
by " the profligate monk Tetzel," and affixed his cele- 
brated propositions to the outer pillars of the great 
church of Wittemberg. The propositions were at 
once printed in thousands, devoured, and spread 
abroad in every direction. In 1518, Luther ap- 
peared, under the safe -conduct of the Elector of 
Saxony, before the Pope's legate at Augsburg; and 
in 1520 he publicly burnt the Pope's bull at Wittem- 
berg, amidst the acclamations of the people. All 
Germany was now in a blaze, and Luther's books 
and pamphlets were everywhere in demand. It was 
shortly after this time that Palissy passed through 
the excited provinces. Wherever he went he heard 
of Luther, the Bible, and the new revelation which 
it had brought to light. The men of his own class, 
with whom he most freely mixed in the course of his 



CHAP. II. 



PALISSY LEARNS TO READ. 



27 



travels — artists, mechanics, and artizans* — were full 
of the new ideas which were stirring the heart of 
Germany. These were embraced with especial fervour 
by the young and the energetic. Minds formed and 
grown old in the established modes of thought were 
unwilling to be disturbed, and satisfied to rest as they 
were : " too old for change " was their maxim. But 
it was different with the young, the ardent, and the 
inquiring, who looked before rather than behind, to 
the future rather than the past. These were, for the 
most part, vehement in support of the doctrines of 
the Eeformation. 

Palissy was then of an age at which the mind is most 
open to receive new impressions. He was, moreover, by 
nature a shrewd observer and an independent thinker ; 
and he could not fail to be influenced by the agitation 
which stirred society to its depths. Among the many 
things which Palissy learned in the course of his travels, 
was the art of reading printed books ; and one of the 
books which he learned to read, and most prized, was the 
printed Bible, the greatest marvel of his time. It was 
necessarily read in secret, for the ban of the church was 
upon it ; but the prohibition was disregarded, and pro- 
bably gave even an additional zest to the study of the 
forbidden book. Men recognised each other's love for 
it as by a secret sympathy ; and they gathered together 
in workshops and dwellings to read and meditate over 

* An old Eoman Catholic historian from their callings have some nobility 

says — "Above all, painters, watch- of mind, were among the first easily 

makers, sculptors, goldsmiths, book- surprised." — Eemond — Ilistoire de 

sellers, printers, and others, who VHeresie de ce Steele, book vii. 931. 



28 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



it, and exhort one another from its pages. Among 
these was Palissy, who, by the time he was thirty years 
old had become a follower of the gospel, and a believer 
in the religion of the open Bible." 5 " 

Palissy returned to France in 1539, at a time 
when persecution was at the hottest ; when printing 
had been suppressed by royal edict ; when the reading 
of the Bible was prohibited on pain of death ; and 
when many were being burnt alive for reading and 
believing it. The persecution especially raged in Paris 
and the neighbourhood, which may account for Palissy's 
avoidance of that city, where an artist so skilled as he 
was would naturally have desired to settle, and his 
proceeding to the remote district of Saintonge, in the 
south-west corner of France. There he married, and 
began to pursue his manifold callings, more particularly 
glass-painting, portrait-painting, and land-measuring. 
He had a long and hard fight for life. His employment 
was fitful, and he was often reduced to great straits. 
Some years after his settlement at Saintes, while still 
struggling with poverty, chance threw in his way an 
enamelled cup of Italian manufacture, of great beauty, 
which he had no sooner seen, than he desired to imi- 

* AVe cannot learn from Palissy's suivre le conseil de Dieu, ses esdits, 
writings what his creed was. He statuts et ordonnances : et en regard- 
never once mentions the names of ant qnel estoit son vouloir, j'ay trouve 
either Luther or Calvin ; but he often que, par testament dernier, il a com- 
refers to the "teachings of the Bible," mande a, ses heritiers qu'ils eussent a 
and ' ' the statutes and ordinances of manger le pain au labeur de leurs 
God as revealed in his Word. " Here, corps, et qu'ils eussent a multiplier 
for example, is a characteristic pas- les talens qu'ils leur avoit laissez par 
sage : — son testament." — Recepte Veritable, 

" Je n'ay trouve rien meilleur que 1563. 



chap. ii. HIS PURSUIT OF THE ENAMEL. 



20 



tate; and from that time the determination to dis- 
cover the art by which it was enamelled possessed 
him like a passion. 

The story of Palissy's heroic ardour in prosecuting 
his researches in connection with this subject is well 
known : how he built furnace after furnace, and made 
experiments with them again and again, only to end in 
failure; how he was all the while studying the nature 
of earths and clays, and learning chemistry, as he 
described it, " with his teeth how he reduced himself 
to a state of the most distressing poverty, which he 
endured amidst the expostulations of his friends, the 
bitter sarcasms of his neighbours, and what was still 
worse to bear, the reproaches of his wife and children. 
But he was borne up throughout by his indomitable 
determination, his indefatigable industry, and his 
irrepressible genius. 

On one occasion he sat by his furnace for six suc- 
cessive days and nights without changing his clothes. 
He made experiment after experiment, and still the 
enamel did not melt. At his last and most desperate 
experiment, when the fuel began to run short, he rushed 
into his house, seized and broke up sundry articles 
of furniture, and hurled them into the furnace to keep 
up the heat. No wonder that his wife and children, 
as well as his neighbours, thought the man had gone 
mad. But he himself was in a measure compensated 
by the fact that the last great burst of heat had melted 
the enamel ; for, when the common clay jars, which 
had been put in brown, were taken out after the 



30 EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



furnace had cooled, they were found covered with 
the white glaze of which he had been so long and so 
furiously in search. By this time, however, he had 
become reduced to a state of the greatest poverty. He 
had stripped his dwelling, he had beggared himself, and 
his children wanted food. " I was in debt," said he, 
" at many places, and when two children were at nurse, 
I was unable to pay the nurse's wages. No one helped 
me. On the contrary, people mocked me, saying, e He 
will rather let his children die of hunger than mind 
his own business.'" Others said of him that he was 
" seeking to make false money." These jeerings of the 
town's folk reached his ears as he passed along the 
streets of Saintes, and cut him to the heart. 

Like Brindley the engineer, Palissy betook himself 
to his bed to meditate upon his troubles and study 
how to find a way out of them. " When I had lain 
for some time in bed," says he, " and considered that 
if a man has fallen into a ditch his first duty is to try 
and raise himself out of it, I, being in like case, rose 
and set to work to paint some pictures, and by this 
and other means I endeavoured to earn a little money. 
Then I said to myself that all my losses and risks 
were over, and there was nothing now to hinder me 
from making good pieces of ware ; and so I began 
again, as before, to work at my old art."* But he was 
still very far from success, and continued to labour on 
for years amidst misfortune, privation, and poverty. 
" All these failures," he continues, " occasioned me 

* Palissy — Be VArt cle Terre : (Euvres Completes, p. 318. 



CHAP. IT. 



HIS SUFFERINGS. 



31 



such labour and sadness of spirit, that before I could 
render my various enamels fusible at the same degree 
of heat, I was obliged, as it were, to roast myself to 
death at the door of the sepulchre ; moreover, in 
labouring at such work, I found myself, in the space of 
about ten years, so worn out that I was shrunk almost 
to a skeleton ; there was no appearance of muscle on 
my arms or legs, so that my stockings fell about my 
feet when I walked abroad." 

His neighbours would no longer have patience with 
him ; and he was despised and mocked by all. Yet 
he persevered with his art, and proceeded to make 
vessels of divers colours, which he at length began to 
be able to sell, and thus earned a slender maintenance 
for his family. " The hope which inspired me," says 
he, " enabled me to proceed with my work, and when 
people came to see me I sometimes contrived to 
entertain them with pleasantry, while I was really sad 
at heart. . . . Worst of all the sufferings I had to 
endure were the mockeries and persecutions of those of 
my household, who were so unreasonable as to expect 
me to execute work without the means of doing so. 
For years my furnaces were without any covering or 
protection, and while attending to them I have been 
exposed for nights, at the mercy of the wind and the 
rain, without any help or consolation, save it might be 
the meauling of cats on the one side, and the howling 
of dogs on the other. Sometimes the tempest would 
beat so furiously against the furnaces that I was 
compelled to leave them, and seek shelter within doors. 



32 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



Drenched by rain, and in no better plight than if I 
had been dragged through mire, I have gone to lie 
down at midnight, or at daybreak, stumbling into the 
house without a light, and reeling from one side to 
another, as if I had been drunken, my heart filled 
with sorrow at the loss of my labour after such long 
toiling. But, alas ! my home proved no refuge for me ; 
for, drenched and besmeared as I was, I found in my 
chamber a second persecution worse than the first, 
which makes me even now marvel that I was not 
utterly consumed by my many sorrows."'"" 

In the midst of his great distress, religion came to 
Palissy as a consoler. He found comfort in recalling 
to mind such passages of the Bible as he carried in his 
memory, and which from time to time gave him 
fresh hope. " You will thus observe," he afterwards 
wrote, " the goodness of God to me : when I was in 
the depth of suffering because of my art, He consoled 
me with His Gospel ; and when I have been exposed 
to trials because of the Gospel, then it has been with 
my art that He has consoled me." When wandering 
abroad in the fields about Saintes, at the time of his 
greatest troubles, Palissy's attention was wont to be 
diverted from his own sorrows by the wonderful 
beauty and infinite variety of nature, of which he was 
a close and accurate observer. What were his petty 
cares and trials in sight of the marvellous works of 
God, which spoke in every leaf, and flower, and plant, 
of His infinite power, and goodness, and wisdom ? 

* Palissy— De V Art cle Terra: CEuvres Completes, p. 321. 



CHAP. II. 



CALVIN IN SA INTONGE. 



33 



" When I contemplated these things/' says Palissy, " I 
have fallen upon my face, and, adoring God, cried to 
Him in spirit, ' What is man that Thou art mindful of 
him ? Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Thy name 
be the honour and the glory/"* 

There were already many followers of the Gospel 
in Saintes and the adjoining districts. It so happened 
that Calvin had, at an early period in his life, visited 
Saintono-e, and sowed its seeds there. Calvin was a 
native of Noyon, in Picardy, and had from his child- 
hood been destined for the priesthood. When only 
twelve years old, he was provided with a benefice, but 
by the time he grew to man's estate, a relative pre- 
sented him with a copy of the Bible, and he became a 
religious reformer. He began, almost involuntarily, to 
exhort others from its pages, and proceeded to preach 
to the people at Bourges, at Paris, and in the adjoining 
districts. From thence he went into Poitou and 
Saintonge on the same errand, holding his meetings 
late at night or early in the morning, in retired places 
— in a cellar or a garret — in a wood or in the open- 
ing of a rock in a mountain-side ; a hollow place of 
this sort, near Poitiers, in which Calvin and his friends 
secretly celebrated the Lord's Supper, being still 
known as " Calvin's Cave." 

We are not informed by Palissy whether he ever 
met Calvin in the course of his mission in Saintonge, 
which occurred shortly after the former had settled at 
Saintes ; but certain it is, that he was one of the first 

* Palissy — P^cceptc Veritable : (Euvres Completes, 116-17. 
D 



34 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



followers and teachers of the new views in that neigh- 
bourhood. Though too poor himself to possess a copy 
of the Bible, Palissy had often heard it read by others 
as well as read it himself while on his travels, and his 
retentive memory enabled him to carry many of its 
most striking passages in his mind/ which he was ac- 
customed to reproduce in his ordinary speech. Hence 
the style of his early writings, which is strongly 
marked by Biblical terms and similitudes. He also 
contrived to obtain many written extracts from the 
Old and New Testament, for the purpose of reading 
them to others, and they formed the texts from which 
he exhorted his fellow Gospellers. For Palissy was one 
of the earliest preachers of the Beformed Church in 
the town of Saintes, if he was not indeed its founder. 
In one of his earliest works, f he gives an account of 
the origin of the movement, which is all the more 
interesting as being that of the principal actor in the 
transactions which he describes : — 

" Some time before this," says he, writing of the year 1557, 
" there was in this town a certain artizan, poor and miserable to 
the last degree, who had so great a desire for the advancement 



* The Vaudois peasantry knew the thus, though their Bibles were seized 

Bible almost by heart. Raids were and burnt, the Vaudois were still 

from time to time made into their enabled to refer to their Bibles through 

district by the agents of the Romish the memories of the young minds in 

Church for the purpose of seizing and which the chapters were preserved, 
burning all such copies of the Bible 

as they could lay hands on. Knowing + Palissy — Recepte Veritable, par 

this, the peasants formed societies of laquelle tons les hommes de la France 

young persons, each of whom was pourront apprenclres a multiplier et 

appointed to preserve in his memory augmenter leur thresors. — CEuvres 

a certain number of chapters ; and Completes, 106-7. 



chap. ii. EARLY GOSPELLERS OE SALXTES. 



S5 



of the Gospel, that he spoke of it one day to another artizan as 
poor as himself, and who knew as little of it as he did, for both 
knew scarcely anything. Xevertheless, the one urged upon the 
other, that if he would but engage to make some sort of exhorta- 
tion, great benefit might arise from it : ami though this last felt 
himself to be utterly destitute of knowledge, the advice gave him 
courage. So, some days later, he drew together one Sunday 
morning some nine or ten persons, and seeing that he was badly 
instructed in letters, lie had extracted several passages from the 
Old and New Testament, having put them in writing. And 
when they had assembled lie read to them the passages or autho- 
rities, saying. • Let every one as lie has received good gifts dis- 
tribute them to others and "'Every tree that beareth not fruit 
shall be cut down and cast into the fire.' He also read another 
passage taken from Deuteronomy, wherein it is said : ' Thou 
shalt proclaim my law when seated in thy house, when walking 
by the way. when lying down, and when rising up.' He further 
propounded the parable of the talents, and cited a number of pas- 
sages, making practical application of them ; and urging, first, 
that to every man appertains the right of speaking of the statutes 
and ordinances of God, to the end that his Word may not be set 
at nought, notwithstanding our unworthiness : and second, that 
certain of his hearers should be incited to folloAv his example. 
Accordingly, they agreed together that six amongst them should 
exhort the others in rotation : that is to say, that each should 
take his turn once in every six weeks, on Sundays only. And as 
they were undertaking a duty, for the due performance of which 
they had received no special instruction, it was arranged that 
they should put their exhortations in writing and read them to 
the assembly. Xow, all these things were done in accordance 
with the good example, counsel, and doctrine of the worthy 
Philebert Hamelin.^ 



* In a previous part of the treatise France. Hamelin, like Calvin, had 

(Rccepte Veritable) in which the above been educated for the priesthood, and, 

passage occurs, Palissy gives an like him, was converted to the new 

interesting account of Philebert views by reading and studying the 

Hamelin, one of the early martyrs Bible. He joined the Calvinist church 

to the reformed faith in the south of at Geneva, where he learned the art of 



36 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



" Such," continues Palissy, " was the beginning of the Reformed 
Church at Saintes. I am confident that when the members first 
began to meet, they did not number more than five persons. 
While the church was thus small, and Master Philebert was in 
prison, there came to us a minister named De la Place, who had 
been sent to preach at Allevert ; but the procureur of Allevert 
arrived at Saintes on the same day about the matter of the baptism 
celebrated by Philebert at the former place, on account of which 
many of the persons there present were liable to heavy penalties. 
This was the occasion of our taking the said De la Place to ad- 
minister to us the word of God, and he remained with us until 
Monsieur de la Boissiere came, who is our minister at the present 



printing, and proceeded to set up a 
press for the purpose of printing 
Bibles. 

From that time, Hamelin went about 
from place to place throughout France, 
selling Bibles and other religious 
books, and everywhere finding persons 
ready to help him in his work. The 
book - hawkers, or colporteurs, were 
among the most active agents of the 
Eeformation. De Felice, in his His- 
tory of the Protestants of France, says : 
" They were called bale -bearers, 
basket or literary carriers. They be- 
longed to different classes of society ; 
many were students in theology, or 
even ministers of the Gospel. Staff 
in hand, basket on back, through 
heat and cold, by lonely ways, through 
mountain ravines and dreary morasses, 
they went from door to door, often ill 
received, always at the hazard of their 
lives, and not knowing in the morning 
where to lay their head at night. It 
was chiefly through them that the 
Bible penetrated into the manor of 
the noble as well as the hut of the 
peasant." 

Of such was Philebert Hamelin, 
who expounded as well as sold the 
Bible. He frequently visited the town 



of Saintes, where he had several friends 
and disciples, of whom Palissy was 
one. Though feeble in frame, and 
suffering from ill health, Hamelin 
made all his journeys on foot. Friends 
offered to lend him their horses to 
ride on ; but he preferred walking, 
alone and unarmed, merely with a staff 
in his hand, and thus he travelled into 
all parts without fear. 

At Hamelin's last visit to Saintes, 
some seven or eight of his friends re- 
ceived him, and after praying with 
them and counselling them to meet 
and exhort one another frequently, he 
set out on foot for Allevert. There 
he publicly preached to many people. 
He also publicly baptized an infant. 
This latter circumstance having come 
to the ears of the Bishop of Saintes, 
he required the magistrates immedi- 
ately to pursue and apprehend Hame- 
lin, who was shortly after taken at the 
house of a gentleman, and, to Palissy's 
horror and indignation, lodged in the 
common gaol with thieves and male- 
factors. "He was so perfect in his 
walk," says Palissy, "that even his 
enemies themselves were constrained 
to acknowledge, though not approving 
of his doctrine, that his was a most 



CHAP. II. 



FIRST CHURCH IN SAINTES. 



37 



time.* But ours is indeed a pitiable case, for although we have 
a good will, we have not the means of supporting ministers. De 
la Place, during the time he was with us, was principally main- 
tained at the expense of gentlefolks, who often kept him at 
their houses ; but, fearing that our ministers might thereby be 
corrupted, Monsieur de la Boissiere was desired not to leave the 
town at the instance of the gentry, without leave, excepting in 
cases of emergency. Such being the case, the poor man was as 
closely confined as any prisoner ; very often he had to eat apples 
and drink water for his dinner, and to use his chemise in lieu of 
a table-cloth ; for there were very few people of any means who 
belonged to our little congregation, and we had not wherewithal 

to pay him his stipend 

" Thus was the church first set up amongst us by a few 
poor and despised people, with great difficulty, and amidst many 
perils. Great was the detraction we had to encounter from 
wicked and perverse calumniators. Some said if our doctrines 
were good we ought to preach them in public. Others alleged 
that we met in secret merely for purposes of wantonness, and 
that at our meetings the women were in common. Again, not- 
withstanding these unfounded scandals, G-od prospered our efforts 



pure and holy life. I am, indeed, 
quite amazed that any men should 
have dared to pronounce sentence of 
death upon him, seeing that they well 
knew, for they had heard, his godly 
conversation. No sooner was I in- 
formed of his imprisonment than I 
had the hardihood (perilous though 
the times then were ! ) to go and re- 
monstrate with six of the principal 
judges and magistrates of the town 
of Saintes, that they had put in prison 
a prophet, an angel of God, sent to 
proclaim His message and the judg- 
ment of condemnation to men in these 
latter times, assuring them that dur- 
ing the eleven years I had known the 
said riiilehert Hamelin he was of so 
pure and holy a way of life that it 



seemed to me that other men were 
altogether wicked compared with him.' ' 
— Becepte Veritable, 106. 

Palissy's remonstrances, made at 
the peril of his own life, were, how- 
ever, of no avail. Hamelin was sent 
to Bordeaux in the custody of the 
provost-marshal. There he was tried 
for the fatal crime of heresy, sentenced 
to death, and — to use Palissy's words 
— "hanged like a common thief." 

* The Becepte Veritable, in which 
Palissy gives this account, is supposed 
to have been written by him in prison 
at Bordeaux, where he was confined 
for the crime of heresy, as will be 
hereafter explained, in the year 1559- 
60. The treatise was printed at La 
Bochelle in 1563. 



88 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



so much, that although our assemblies were for the most part 
held at midnight, and our enemies heard us passing along the 
streets, God kept them bridled in such sort that we were pre- 
served for a time under His protection. And when God willed 
that his Church should at length make a public manifestation in 
open day, then was a great work done in our town ; for though 
two of our principal men, who went to Toulouse, were unable to 
obtain permission for us to hold our assemblies in public, we 
nevertheless had the courage to take the market-house for the 
purpose."* 

The meetings of the little congregation soon be- 
came popular in Saintes. The people of the town 
went at first out of curiosity to observe their pro- 
ceedings, and were gradually attracted by the earnest- 
ness of the worshippers. The members of "The 
Beligion" were known throughout the town to be 
persons of blameless lives, peaceable, well-disposed, 
and industrious, who commanded the respect even of 
their enemies. At length the Koman Catholics of 
Saintes began to say to their monks and priests — 
" See these ministers of the new religion : they make 
prayers ; they lead a holy life : why cannot you do 
the like ?" The monks and priests, not to be out- 
done by the men of The Eeligion, then began to 
pray and to preach like the ministers ; " so that in 
those days," to use the words of Palissy, " there were 
prayers daily in this town, both on one side and 
the other." So kindly a spirit began to spring up 
under the operation of these influences, that the re- 
ligious exercises of both parties — of the old and the 
new religion — were for a short time celebrated in some 

* Rccepte Veritable, 106-0. 



chap. it. SOCIAL REFORMATION IN SAINTES. 



39 



of the churches by turns ; one portion of the people 
attending the prayers of the old church, and another por- 
tion the preaching of the new ; so that the Catholics, 
returning from celebrating the mass, were accustomed 
to meet the Huguenots on their way to hear the exhor- 
tation,* as is usual in Holland at this day. The effects 
of this joint religious action on the morals of the 
people are best described in Palissy's own words : — 

" The progress made by us was such, that in the course of a 
few years, by the time that our enemies rose up to pillage and 
persecute us, lewd plays, dances, ballads, gormandizings, and 
superfluities of dress and head-gear, had almost entirely ceased. 
Scarcely was any bad language to be heard on any side ; nor 
were there any more crimes and scandals. Lawsuits greatly 
diminished ; for no sooner had any two persons of The Religion 
fallen out, than means were found to bring them to an agree- 
ment ; moreover, very often before beginning any lawsuit, the 
one would not begin it before first exhorting the other. When 
the time for celebrating Easter drew near, many differences, dis- 
cussions, and quarrels, were thus stayed and settled. There were 
then no questions amongst them, but only psalms, prayers, and 
spiritual canticles ; f nor was there any more desire for lewd and 
dissolute songs. Indeed, The Eeligion made such progress, that 
even the magistrates began to prohibit things that had grown up 



* Alfred Dumesnil — Bernard 
Palissy, Le Potter de Terre ; Paris, 
Gressart, p. 120. 

t The Reformers early enlisted 
music in their service, and it exercised 
a powerful influence in extending the 
new movement amongst the people. 
" Music," said Luther, "is the art of 
the prophets. It is one of the most 
magnificent and delightful presents 
that God has given us. Satan cannot 
make head against music." Luther 
was a poet as well as a musician ; his 



EwH feste Burg ist unser Gott (one of 
the themes of Meyerbeer's Hugue- 
nots), which rang through all Ger- 
many, was the " Marseillaise" of the 
Reformation. Luther had improved 
both the words and the music two 
days before his appearance at the Diet 
of Worms. As he was journeying to- 
wards that city, he caught sight of 
its bell-towers in the distance, on 
which he rose up in his chariot and 
sang the noble song. 

The French Reformers also enlisted 



40 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. it. 



under their authority. Thus, they forbade innkeepers to permit 
gambling or dissipation to be carried on within their premises, to 
the enticement of men away from their own homes and families. 

" In those days might be seen, on Sundays, bands of work- 
people walking abroad in the meadows, the groves, and the fields, 
singing psalms and spiritual songs, or reading to and instructing 
one another. There might also be seen girls and maidens seated 
in groups in the gardens and pleasant places, singing songs on 
sacred themes ; or boys accompanied by their teachers, the effects 
of whose instruction had already been so salutary, that those 
young persons not only exhibited a manly bearing, but a manful 
steadfastness of conduct. Indeed, these various influences, work- 
ing one with another, had already effected so much good, that 
not only had the habits and modes of life of the people been 
reformed, but their very countenances themselves seemed to be 
changed and improved."* 

But this happy state of affairs did not last long. 
While the ministers of the new religion and priests of 
the old (with a few exceptions), were working thus 
harmoniously together at Saintes, events were rapidly 
drawing to a crisis in other parts of France. The 
heads of the Koman Catholic Church saw with alarm 



music in their service at an early 
period. The psalms were translated 
by Clement Marot and Theodore de 
Beza, set to attractive music, and 
sung in harmony in family worship, 
in the streets and the fields, and in 
congregational meetings. During a 
lull in the persecution at Paris in 
1558, thousands of persons assembled 
at the Pre-aux-Clercs to listen to the 
psalms sung by the men of ' ' The Re- 
ligion " as they marched along. But 
when the persecution revived, the 
singing of psalms was one of the things 
most strictly interdicted, even on pain 
of death. 



Calvin also, at Geneva, took great 
care to have the psalms set to good 
music. He employed, Avith that ob- 
ject, the best composers, and distri- 
buted printed copies of the music 
throughout all the churches. Thus 
psalmody, in which the whole people 
could join, everywhere became an 
essential part of the service of the Re- 
formed Church ; the chaunts of the 
Roman Catholics having, until then, 
been sung only by the priests or by 
hired performers. 

* Pallssy — (Euvres Completes : Ee- 
cepte Veritable, 108. 



chap. n. RENEWAL OF THE PERSECUTION. 



41 



the rapid strides which the new religion was making, 
and that a large proportion of the population were 
day by day escaping from their control. Pope Pius 
IV., through his agents, urged the decisive interfer- 
ence of the secular authority to stay the progress of 
heresy; and Philip II. of Spain supported him with 
all his influence. The Huguenots had, by virtue of 
their increasing numbers, become a political power ; 
and many of the leading politicians of France em- 
braced the Keformed cause, not because they were 
impressed by the truth of the new views, but because 
they were capable of being used as an instrument 
for party warfare. Ambitious men, opposed to the 
court party, arrayed themselves on the side of the 
Huguenots, caring perhaps little for their principles, 
but mainly actuated by the desire of promoting their 
own personal ends. Thus political and religious dis- 
sension combined together to fan the fury of the con- 
tending parties into a flame ; the councils of state 
became divided and distracted ; there was no con- 
trolling mediating power ; the extreme partizaus were 
alike uncompromising ; and the social outbreak, long 
imminent, at length took place. The head of the 
church in France alarmed the king with fears for his 
throne and his life. " If the secular arm/' said the 
Cardinal de Lorraine to Henry II., " fails in its duty, 
all the malcontents will throw themselves into this de- 
testable sect. They will first destroy the ecclesiastical 
power, after which it will be the turn of the royal 
power." The secular arm was not slow to strike. In 



42 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



1559, a royal edict was published declaring the crime 
of heresy punishable by death, and forbidding the 
judges to remit or mitigate the penalty. The fires of 
persecution, which had long been smouldering, again 
burst forth all over France. The provincial Parlia- 
ments instituted Chambres ardentes, so called because 
they condemned to the fire all who were accused and 
convicted of the crime of heresy. Palissy himself has 
vividly narrated the effect of these relentless measures 
in his own district of Saintes : 

" The very thought of the evil deeds of those days," says 
he, " when wicked men were let loose upon us to scatter, over- 
whelm, ruin, and destroy the followers of the Reformed faith, fills 
my mind with horror. That I might be out of the way of their 
frightful and execrable tyrannies, and in order not to be a witness 
of the cruelties, robberies, and murders perpetrated in this rural 
neighbourhood, I concealed myself at home, remaining there for 
the space of two months. It seemed to me as if during that time 
hell itself had broken loose, and that raging devils had entered 
into and taken possession of the town of Saintes. For in the 
place where I had shortly before heard only psalms and spiritual 
songs, and exhortations to pure and honest living, I now heard 
nothing but blasphemies, assaults, threatenings, tumults, abomin- 
able language, dissoluteness, and lewd and disgusting songs, of 
such sort that it seemed to me as if all purity and godliness had 
become completely stifled and extinguished. Among other hor- 
rors of the time, there issued forth from the Castle of Taillebourg 
a band of wicked imps who worked more mischief even than any 
of the devils of the old school. On their entering the town ac- 
companied by certain priests, with drawn swords in their hands, 
they shouted — ' Where are they 1 let us cut their throats in- 
stantly ! ' though they knew well enough that there was no re- 
sistance to them, those of the Reformed Church having all taken to 
flight. To make matters worse, they met an innocent Parisian in 
the street, reported to have money about him, and him they set 



chap. ii. EMPLOYED BY MONTMORENCY. 43 

upon and killed without resistance, first stripping him to his 
shirt before putting him to death. Afterwards they went from 
house to house, stealing, plundering, robbing, gormandising, mock- 
ing, swearing, and uttering foul blasphemies both against God 
and man."* 

During the two months that Palissy remained 
secluded at home, he busily occupied himself in per- 
fecting the secret of the enamel, after which he had 
been so long in search. For, notwithstanding his 
devotion to the exercises of his religion, he continued 
to devote himself with do less zeal to the practice of 
his art ; and his fame as a potter already extended 
beyond the bounds of his district. He had indeed 
been so fortunate as by this time to attract the 
notice of a powerful noble, the Duke of Montmorency, 
Constable of France, then engaged in building the 
magnificent chateau of Ecouen, at St. Denis, near 
Paris. Specimens of Palissy's enamelled tiles had 
been brought under the duke's notice, who admired 
them so much, that he at once gave Palissy an order 
to execute the pavement for his new residence. He 
even advanced a sum of money to the potter, to enable 
him to enlarge his works, so as to complete the order 
with despatch. 

Palissy s opinions were of course well known in his 
district, where he had been the founder, and was in a 
measure the leader, of the Eeformed sect. The duke 
was doubtless informed of the danger which his potter 
ran on the outbreak of the persecution ; and ac- 
cordingly used his influence to obtain a safeguard for 

* Palissy — (Euvres Completes : Becepte Veritable, 111. 



44 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. ii. 



him from the Duke of Montpensier, who then 
commanded the royal army in Saintonge. But even 
this protection was insufficient ; for, as the persecution 
waxed hotter, and the search for heretics became 
keener, Palissy found his workshop no longer safe. 
At length he was seized, dragged from his home, and 
hurried off by night to Bordeaux, to be put upon his 
trial for the crime of heresy. And this first great 
potter of France — this true man of genius, religion, 
and virtue — would certainly have been tried and 
burnt, as hundreds more were, but for the accidental 
circumstance that the Duke of Montmorency was in 
urgent want of enamelled tiles for his castle-floor, 
and that Palissy was the only man in France capable 
of executing them. 

In the epistle -dedicatory to the Recepte Veritable, 
Palissy, addressing the duke, says with much apparent 
simplicity — "I assure you, in all truth, that my enemies 
have really no cause against me, except that I have 
many times shown them certain passages of Scripture, 
wherein it is written, that he is miserable and accursed 
who drinks the milk, and clothes himself with the 
wool of the flock, but gives them no pasture. And 
although my doing so ought to have incited them to 
love me, it only had the effort of inducing them to 
destroy me as a malefactor."* It is not improbable 

* In his prefatory address to ' ' the temps pour leur faire service, qu'ils 

reader" he also sa,js : — " Je voudrois leur plaise ne me rendre mal pour 

prier la noblesse de France, ausquels bien, comme ont fait les Ecclesias- 

le pourtrait pourroit beaucoup seruir, tkpies Romains de cette yille, lesquels 

qu' apres que j'auray employe mon m'ont voulu faire pendre pour leur 



chap. it. PALISSY IMPRISONED A T BORDEA UX. 45 



that the sending of Palissy to Bordeaux, to be tried 
there instead of at Saintes, was a ruse on the part of 
the Duke of Montpensier, to gain time until the 
Constable could be informed of the danger which 
threatened the life of his potter ; for Palissy adds — 
"It is a certain truth, that had I been tried by the 
judges of Saintes, they would have caused me to die 
before I could have obtained from you any help." 
He proceeds : — 

" I would have taken very good care not to have fallen into 
the sanguinary hands of my enemies, had it not been that I relied 
upon their having respect for your work on which I was engaged, 
as well as on the protection of my lord the Duke of Montpen- 
sier, who gave me a safeguard, prohibiting them from taking 
notice of or interfering with me, or with my house, well know- 
ing, as he did, that no one could execute your tiles but myself. 
So, being in their hands a prisoner, the Seigneur de Burie, the 
Seigneur de J arnac, and the Seigneur de Ponts, made every effort 
towards my deliverance, in order that your work might be com- 
pleted. Nevertheless, my enemies sent me by night to Bordeaux 
by roundabout roads, having no regard either for your dignity 
or your desires. This I found very strange, seeing that the 



avoir pourchasse le plus grand bien 
que iamais leur pourroit aduenir, qui 
est pour les avoir voulu inciter a 
paistre leur troupeaux suivant le 
commandement de Dieu. Et sauroit- 
on dire que iamais ie leur eusse fait 
aucun tort ? Mais parce que, ie leur 
auois remonstre leur perdition au dix- 
huitieme de 1' Apocalypse, tendant a 
fin de une authorite escrite au prophete 
Jeremie, oil il dit : Malediction sur 
vous, Pasteurs, qui mangez le lait et 
vestissez la laine, et laissez mes brebis 
esparses par les montagnes ! Ie les 



redemanderay de nostre main. Eux 
voyans telle chose, au lieu de s'amen- 
der, ils se sont eudurcis, et se sont 
bandez contre la lumiere, a fin de 
cheminer le surplus de laurs iours en 
tenebres, et ensuyvans leurs voluptez 
et desirs eharnels accoustumez. Ie 
n'eusse iamais pense que par la ils 
eussent voulu prendre occasion de me 
faire mourir. Dieu nrest temoin que 
le mal qu'ils m'ont fait n'a este pour 
autre occasion que pour la susdite. 
Ce neantmoins, ie prie Dieu qu'ils les 
veuille amender." — Preface, pp. 11, 12. 



4G 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALISSY. chap. it. 



Count Rochefoucauld, although for the time he took the part of 
your adversaries, nevertheless felt so much pride in your honour, 
that he did not wish any other work than yours to be proceeded 
with in my pottery, because of your commands ; while my perse- 
cutors, on the contrary, had no sooner made me prisoner than 
they broke into my workshop and made a public place of part 
thereof, for they had come to a resolution in the Maison de 
Ville to raze my work to the ground, though it had been partly 
erected at your expense ; and this resolution they would have 
carried out, had it not been that the Seigneur de Ponts and his 
lady entreated the aforesaid persons not to commit such an out- 
rage. I have set down all these things in writing in order that 
you may see that I was not committed to prison as a thief or a 
murderer. I know that you will bear these things in remembrance 
both as to time and place, seeing that your work must cost you 
much more than it otherwise would have done, through the in- 
jury you have sustained in my person ; nevertheless I hope that, 
following the counsel of God, you will render good for evil, 
which is my desire ; while for my part I will endeavour to the 
best of my power to repay the many benefits which you have 
been pleased to confer upon me." * 

To return to the narrative. No sooner did Mont- 
morency hear of the peril into which his potter had 
fallen, and find that unless he bestirred himself 
Palissy would be burnt and his tiles for Ecouen re- 
main unfinished, than he at once used his influence 
with Catherine de Medicis, the queen-mother, with 
whom he was then all-powerful, and had him forthwith 
appointed " Inventor of Rustic Figulines to the King." 
This appointment had the immediate effect of with- 
drawing Palissy from the jurisdiction of the Parliament 
of Bordeaux, and transferring him to that of the Grand 

* Preface to Secejjfe Veritable, ad- le Due de Montmorency, Pair et Con- 
dressed by Palissy to "Monseigneur nestable de France. " 



chap. ir. IMPPISOXED IX THE B AS THE. 



47 



Council of Paris, which was tantamount to an indefinite 
adjournment of his case. The now royal potter was 
accordingly released from prison, and returned to 
Saintes to rind his workshop rootless and devastated. 
He at once made arrangements for leaving the place : 
and, shaking the dust of Saintes from his feet, he 
shortly after removed to the Tuileries * at Paris, where 
he long continued to carry on the manufacture of his 
famous pottery. 

It is not necessary to pursue the career of Palissy 
further than to add. that the circumstance of his being 
employed by the bigoted Catherine de Medicis had not 
the slightest effect in inducing him to change his reli- 
gion. He remained a Huguenot, and stoutly main- 
tained his opinions to the last — so stoutly indeed, that 
towards the close of his life, when an old man of 
seventy- eight, he was again arrested as a heretic and 
imprisoned in the Bastile. He was threatened with 
death unless he recanted. But though he was feeble, 
and trembling on the verge of the grave, his spirit was 
as brave as ever. He was as obstinate now in holding 
to his religion, as he had been more than thirty years 
before in hunting out the secret of the enamel. 
Mathieu de Launav. minister of state, one of the six- 
teen members of council, insisted that Palissy should 
be publicly burnt : but the Due de Mayenne, who pro- 
tected him. contrived to protract the proceedings and 
delay the sentence. 



* Tuileries — so called from the tile-works originally established there hy 
Francis I. in 1518. 



43 



EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF PALIS SY. chap. ir. 



The French historian D'Aubigne, in his Universal 
History, describes Henry III. as visiting Palissy in 
person with the object of inducing him to abjure 
his faith. " My good man/' said the king, " you have 
now served my mother and myself for forty-five years. 
We have put up with your adhering to your religion 
amidst fires and massacres. But now I am so pressed 
by the Guise party, as well as by my own people, that I 
am constrained to leave you in the hands of your 
enemies, and to-morrow you will be burnt unless you 
become converted." " Sire," answered the unconquer- 
able old man, "I am ready to give my life for the 
glory of God. You have said many times that you 
have pity on me ; now I have pity on you, who have 
pronounced the words 'I am constrained/ It is not 
spoken like a king, sire ; it is what you, and those who 
constrain you, the Guisards and all your people, can 
never effect upon me, for I know how to die." 

Palissy was not burnt, but died in the Bastile, 
after about a year's imprisonment, courageously per- 
severing to the end, and glorying in being able to lay 
down his life for his faith. Thus died a man of truly 
great and noble character, of irrepressible genius, indefa- 
tigable industry, heroic endurance, and inflexible rec- 
titude — one of France's greatest and noblest sons. 



CHAPTEE III. 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE "REFORMED IN FRANCE AND 
FLANDERS. 

Palissy was not the only man of genius in France 
who embraced the Eeformed faith. The tendency of 
books and the Bible was to stimulate inquiry on the 
part of all who studied them ; to extend the reign of 
thought, and emancipate the mind from the dominion 
of mere human authority. Hence we find such men 
as Peter Ramus and Joseph Justus Scaliger, the philo- 
sophers ; Charles Dumoulin, the jurist ; Ambrose Pare, 
the surgeon ; Henry Stephens (or Estienne), the printer 
and scholar;* Jean Groujon, the sculptor; Charles 
Goudimel, the musical composer ; and Oliver de Serre, 
the agriculturist, — were all Protestants. These were 
among the very first men of their time in France. 

Persecution did not check the spread of the new 
views : on the contrary, it extended them. The 
spectacle of men and women publicly suffering death 
for their faith, expiring under the most cruel tortures 
rather than deny their convictions, attracted the at- 

* The Steplienses, being threatened Paris for Geneva, where they settled, 
with persecution by the Sorbonne be- and a long succession of illustrious 
cause of the editions of the Bible and scholars and printers handed down 
New Testament printed by them, the reputation of the family, 
were under the necessity of leaving 

E 



50 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



tention even of the incredulous. Their curiosity was 
roused ; they desired to learn what there was in the 
forbidden Bible to inspire such constancy and endur- 
ance ; and they too read the book, and in many cases 
became followers of The Keligion. 

Thus the new views spread rapidly all over France. 
They not only became established in all the large 
towns, but penetrated the rural districts, more espe- 
cially in the south and south-east of France. The 
social misery which pervaded those districts doubtless 
helped the spread of the new doctrines among the lower 
classes ; for " there was even more discontent abroad," 
said Brantome, "than Huguenotism." But they also 
extended amongst the learned and the wealthy. The 
heads of the house of Bourbon, Antoine duke of 
Vendome and Louis prince of Conde, declared them- 
selves in favour of the new views. The former became 
the husband of the celebrated Jeanne D'Albret, queen 
of Navarre, daughter of the Protestant Margaret of 
Valois ; and the latter became the recognised leader of 
the Huguenots. The head of the Coligny family took 
the same side. The Montmorencies were divided ; 
the Constable halting between the two opinions, 
waiting to see which should prove the stronger ; while 
others of the family openly sided with the Eeformed. 
Indeed, it seemed at one time as if France were on 
the brink of becoming Protestant. In 1561, the 
alarmed Cardinal de Sainte-Croix wrote to the Pope, 
" The kingdom is already half-Huguenot." 

When Charles IX. succeeded to the throne in 1560, 



chap. in. MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL. 51 



he was a boy only ten years old, and entirely under 
the control of Catherine de Medicis, his mother. The 
finances of the kingdom were found to be in a 
deplorable state, and the public purse was almost 
empty. Society was distracted by the feuds of the 
nobles, over whom, as in Scotland about the same 
period, the monarch exercised no effective control. 

France had, however, her Parliament or States- 
General, which in a measure placed the king s govern- 
ment en rapport with the nation. On its assembling 
in December 1560, the Chancellor de L'Hopital 
exhorted men of all parties to rally round the young 
king ; and, while condemning the odious punishments 
which had recently been inflicted on persons of the 
Eeformed faith, he announced the intended holding of 
a national council, and expressed the desire that thence- 
forward France should recognise neither Huguenots 
nor Papists, but only Frenchmen. 

This was the first utterance of the voice of con- 
ciliation. The Protestants heard it with joy, their 
enemies with rage. Jean Quintin, the representative 
of the clergy, demanded that measures should be taken 
to deliver France from heresy, and that Charles IX. 
should vindicate his claim to the title of " Most Chris- 
tian King." Lange, the spokesman of the Tiers Etat, 
on the other hand, declared against " the three principal 
vices of the ecclesiastics — pride, avarice, and ignor- 
ance;" and urged that they should return to the 
simplicity of the primitive church. The nobles, 
divided amongst themselves, demanded, some that the 



52 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. nr. 



preaching of the Gospel should be forbidden, and others 
that there should be general freedom of worship ; 
but all who spoke were unanimous in acknowledging 
the necessity for a reform in the discipline of the 
church.* 

While the state of religion thus occupied the depu- 
ties, an equally grave question occupied the court. 
There was no money in the exchequer ; the rate of 
interest was twelve per cent ; and forty-three millions 
of francs were required to be raised from an im- 
poverished nation. The deputies were alarmed at the 
appalling figure which the chancellor specified ; and, 
declaring that they had not the requisite power to 
vote the required sum, they broke up amidst agitation, 
leaving De LTIopital at variance with the Parliament, 
which refused to register the edict of amnesty to the 
Protestants which the king had proclaimed. 

The kings minister was, however, desirous of 
bringing all parties to an agreement, if possible, and 
especially of allaying the civil discord which seemed 
to be fast precipitating France into civil war. He 
accordingly, with the sanction of the queen-mother, 
arranged for a conference between the heads of the 
religious parties, which took place at Vassy in the 
presence of the king and his court, in August 1561. 
Pope Pius IV. was greatly exasperated when in- 
formed of the intended conference, and declared him- 
self to have been betrayed by Catherine de Medicis.t 



* Puaux — Histoire de la lieforma- f Puatjx (ii. 9S) quotes a remark - 
tion Francaise, ii. 82. able letter written at this time by 



CHAP. III. 



A CONFERENCE HELD. 



53 



The granting of such a conference was a recognition 
of the growing power of heresy in France — the same 
heresy which had already deprived Eome of her do- 
minion over the mind of England and half Germany. 
The Pope s fears were, doubtless, not without founda- 
tion; and had France at that juncture possessed a 
Knox or a Luther — a Eegent Murray or a Lord 
Burleigh — the results would have been widely dif- 
ferent. But as it was, the Eeformed party had no 
better leader than the scholarly and pious Theodore 



Catherine de Medicis to the Pope, 
defending herself for having sanc- 
tioned the conference, and urging the 
necessity for a reform in the church. 
"The number of those who have 
separated themselves from the Eoman 
Church," she said, "is so great that 
they can no longer be restrained by 
severity of law or force of arms. They 
have become so powerful by reason of 
the nobles and magistrates who have 
joined the party, they are so firmly 
united, and daily acquire such 
strength, that they are becoming more 
and more formidable in all parts of 
the kingdom. In the meantime, by 
the grace of God, there are amongst 
them neither anabaptists nor liber- 
tines, nor any partizans of odious 
opinions. All admit the twelve articles 
of the creed as they have been ex- 
plained by Pius III. and the oecumeni- 
cal councils. Thus many of the most 
zealous Catholics believe that it is not 
necessary to curtail the commimion of 
the church, although they think dif- 
ferently on other points, wherein they 
consider change may be tolerated, and 
which might be a step towards the 



reunion of the Greek with the Latin 
Clrarch. Many persons of great piety 
indulge the hope that if they can 
terminate in some such manner the 
differences of religion, God, who al- 
ways helps his people, will dissipate 
the darkness and make his light and 
truth to shine in the eyes of all men." 
The queen-mother further proceeded 
to specify the abuses which had crept 
into public worship in the church, 
and requested the Pope to banish the 
use of the Latin tongue. " If the 
peo pie do not understand what is said, ' ' 
she observed, with much reason, "how 
can they intelligently respond with 
the 'Amen' or 'Ainsi soit-il ?' " The 
Pope concealed his indignation on 
receipt of this letter, but despatched 
as his legate to Paris the Cardinal de 
Ferrara, of infamous origin, grandson 
of Roderic Borgia and son of Eoderic's 
daughter Lucretia. The papal legate 
had usually been welcomed at Paris 
by the ringing of all the church-bells, 
but on this occasion it was matter of 
general remark that the bells were 
mute. 



54 PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



de Beza ; and the conference had no other result 
than to drive the contending parties more widely as- 
sunder than before. 

Although a royal edict was published in January 
1562, guaranteeing to the Protestants liberty of wor- 
ship, the concession was set at defiance by the Papal 
party, whose leaders urged on the people in many 
districts to molest and attack the followers of the new 
faith. The Papists denounced the heretics, and called 
upon the government to extirpate them ; the Hugue- 
nots, on their part, denounced the corruptions of the 
church, and demanded their reform. There was no do- 
minant or controlling power in the state, which drifted 
steadily in the direction of civil war. Both parties be- 
gan to arm ; and in such a state of things a spark may 
kindle a conflagration. The queen-mother, though 
inclining to the side of the Reformed, did not yet dare 
to take a side ; but she sounded Coligny as to the 
number of followers that he could, in event of need, 
place at the service of the king. His answer was, 
" We have two thousand and fifty churches, and four 
hundred thousand men able to bear arms, without 
taking into account our secret adherents."* Such was 
the critical state of affairs when matters were precipi- 
tated to an issue by the action of the Duke of Guise, 
the leader of the Catholic party. 

On Christmas day 1562, the Protestants of Vassy 
in Champagne, met to the number of about three 
thousand, to listen to the preaching of the Word, and 

* Memoires de Conde, ii. 587. 



CHAP. IIT. 



MASSACRE OF VASSY. 



55 



to celebrate the Sacrament according to the practice 
of their church. Vassy was one of the possessions of 
the Guises, the mother of whom, Antoinette cle Bour- 
bon, an ardent Eoman Catholic, could not brook the 
idea of the vassals of the family daring to profess a 
faith different from that of their feudal superior. 
Complaint had been made to her Grace, by the Bishop 
of Chalons, of the offence done to religion by the pro- 
ceedings of the people of Yassy ; and she threatened 
them, if they persisted in their proceedings, with the 
vengeance of her son the Duke of Guise. 

Undismayed by this threat, the Protestants of 
Vassy continued to meet publicly and listen to their 
preachers, believing themselves to be under the pro- 
tection of the law, according to the terms of the royal 
edict. On the 1st of March 1563, they held one of 
their meetings, at which about twelve hundred per- 
sons were present in a large barn which served for a 
church. The day before, the Duke of Guise, accom- 
panied by the duchess his wife, the Cardinal of Guise, 
and about two hundred men armed with arquebusses 
and poniards, set out for Vassy. They rested during 
the night at Dampmarten, and next morning marched 
direct upon the congregation assembled in the barn. 
The minister, Morel, had only begun his opening 
prayer, when two shots were fired at the persons on 
the platform. The congregation tried in vain to shut 
the doors ; the followers of the Duke of Guise burst 
in, and precipitated themselves on the unarmed men, 
women, and children. For an hour they fired, hacked, 



56 PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. nr. 



and stabbed amongst them, the duke coolly watching 
the carnage. Sixty persons of both sexes were left 
dead on the spot, more than two hundred were severely 
wounded, and the rest contrived to escape. After 
the massacre, the duke sent for the local judge, and 
severely reprimanded him for having permitted the 
Huguenots of Vassy thus to meet. The judge en- 
trenched himself behind the edict of the king. The 
duke's eyes flashed with rage, and striking the hilt of 
his sword with his hand, he said, " the sharp edge of 
this will soon cut your edict to pieces/'* 

The massacre of Vassy was the match applied to 
the charge which was now ready to explode. It was 
the signal to Catholic France to rise in mass against 
the Huguenots. The clergy glorified the deed from the 
pulpit, and compared the Duke to Moses, in ordering 
the extermination of all who had bowed the knee to 
the golden calf. A fortnight later, the Duke entered 
Paris in triumph, followed by about twelve hundred 
noblemen and gentlemen, mounted on horses richly 
caparisoned. The provost of merchants went out to 
meet and welcome him at the Porte Saint-Denis ; and 
the people received him with immense acclamations 
as the defender of the faith and the saviour of the 
country. 

Theodore de Beza, overwhelmed with grief, waited 
on his Majesty, to complain of the gross violation of 
the terms of the royal edict of which the Guise party 
had been guilty. But the king and the queen-mother 

* Davila — Histoire ties Guerres Civiles de France, liv. ii. p. 379. 



chap. in. DESTRUCTION OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 57 



were powerless amidst the whirlwind of excitement 
which prevailed throughout Paris. They felt that 
their own lives Avere not safe ; and they at once 
secretly departed for Fontainebleau. The Duke of 
G-uise followed them, accompanied by a strong escort. 
Arrived there, and admitted to an interview, the Duke 
represented to Catherine that, in order to prevent the 
Huguenots obtaining possession of the kings person, 
it was necessary that he should accompany them to 
Melun ; but the queen-mother might remain if she 
chose. She determined to accompany her son. After 
a brief stay at Vincennes, the court was again installed 
in the Louvre on the 6th of April. The queen-mother 
was vanquished. 

The court waverers and the waiters on fortune at 
once arrayed themselves on the side of the strong. 
The old Constable de Montmorency, who had been 
halting between the two opinions, signalised his re-ad- 
herence to the Church of Eome by a characteristic act. 
Placing himself at the head of the mob, whose idol he 
was ambitious to be, he led them to the storming of 
the Protestant church outside the Porte Saint-Jacques, 
called the " Temple of Jerusalem." Bursting in the 
doors of the empty place, they tore up the seats, and 
placing them and the Bibles in a pile upon the floor 
they set the whole on fire, amidst great acclamations. 
After this exploit, the constable made a sort of tri- 
umphal entry into Paris, as if he had won some great 
battle. Not content, he set out on the same day to 
gather more laurels at the village of Popincourt, where 



58 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



lie had the Protestant church there set on fire ; but 
the conflagration extending to the adjoining houses, 
many of them were also burnt down. For these two 
great exploits, however, the constable, if we except 
the acclamations of the mob, received no other ac- 
knowledgment than the nickname of " Captain Burn- 
benches I"* 

More appalling, however, than the burning of 
churches, were the massacres which followed that of 
Vassy all over France — at Paris, at Senlis, at Amiens, 
at Meaux, at Chalons, at Troyes, at Bar-sur-Seine, at 
Epernay, at Nevers, at Mans, at Angers, at Blois, and 
many other places. At Tours the number of the 
slain was so great, that the banks of the Loire were 
almost covered with the corpses of men, women, and 
children. The persecution especially raged in Provence, 
where the Protestants were put to death after being 
subjected to a great variety of tortures.t Any detail 
of these events would present only a hideous monotony 
of massacre. We therefore pass them by. 

The Huguenots, taken unawares, were at first 
unable to make head against their enemies. But the 
Prince of Conde took the field, and numbers at once 
rallied to his standard. Admiral Coligny at first 
refused to join them, but yielding to the entreaties of 
his wife, he at length placed himself by the side of 

* Memoires dc Conde, iii. p. 187. the real Saint Bartholomew ty&s not 

f Puaux, ii. p. 152. This writer that of 1572, but of 1562 — which year 

says that although the massacre of contains by far the most dolorous 

Saint Bartholomew is usually cited as chapter in the history of French Pro- 

the culminating horror of the time, testantism. 



chap. in. THE ICONOCLASTS BROKE LOOSE. 



59 



Conde. A period of fierce civil war ensued, in which 
the worst passions were evoked on both sides, and 
frightful cruelties were perpetrated, to the shame of 
religion, in whose name these things were done. The 
Huguenots revenged themselves on the assassins of 
their co-religionists, by defacing and destroying the 
churches and monasteries. In their iconoclastic rage 
they hewed and broke the images, the carvings, and 
the richly-decorated work of the cathedrals at Bourges, 
at Lyons, at Orleans, at Eouen, at Caen, at Tours, and 
many other places. They tore down the crucifixes, 
and dragged them through the mud of the streets. 
They violated the tombs alike of saints and sovereigns, 
and profaned the shrines which were the most sacred 
in the eyes of the Eoman Catholics. " It was," says 
Henri Martin, " as if a blast of the infernal trumpet 
had everywhere awakened the spirit of destruction, 
and the delirious fury grew and became drunk with 
its own excess/' All this rage, however, was but the 
inevitable reaction against the hideous cruelties of 
which the Huguenots had so long been merely the 
passive victims. They decapitated beautiful statues 
of stone, it is true ; but the Guises had decapitated 
the living men. 

It is not necessary, in our rapid sketch, to follow 
the course of the civil war. The Huguenots were 
everywhere outnumbered. They fought bravely, but 
they fought as rebels, the king and the queen-mother 
being now at the head of the Guise party. In nearly 
all the great battles fought by them, they were de- 



GO 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



feated — at Dreux,* at Saint Denis, at Jarnac, and at 
Montcontour. But they always rallied again, sometimes 
in greater numbers than before ; and at length Coligny 
was enabled to collect such reinforcements as seriously 
to threaten Paris. France had now been devastated 
throughout by the contending armies, and many of 
the provinces were reduced almost to a state of desert. 
The combatants on both sides were exhausted, though 
their rancour remained unabated. Peace, however, 
had at last become a necessity ; and a treaty was 
signed at Saint Germains, in 1570, by which the Pro- 
testants were guaranteed liberty of worship, equality 
before the law, and admission to the universities ; 
while the four principal towns of Eochelle, Montauban, 
Cognac, and La Charite, were committed to them as a 
pledge of safety. Under the terms of this treaty, 
France enjoyed a state of quiet for about two years ; 
but it was only the quiet that preceded the outbreak 
of another storm. 

At the famous Council of Trent, which met in 1545 
and continued its sittings for sixteen years, during 
which the events thus rapidly described were in pro- 



* This was nearly a drawn battle ; been lost, what would have become of 

and that it was decided in favour of France ? Its government would have 

the Guise party was almost entirely been changed as well as its religion ; 

due to the Swiss infantry, who alone for with a young king parties can do 

resisted the shock of Conde's cavalry, what they Avill." When the news ot 

When Conde and Coligny withdrew the victory reached the Council of 

their forces in good order, 8000 men Trent, then sitting, it occasioned the 

lay dead on the field. Montluc, one prelates as much joy as when they had 

of the Guise generals, says, in his heard of the death of Luther. 
Commentaries: — "If this battle had 



chap. in. MEETING OF CATHERINE AND ALVA. 61 



gress, the laws of the Koman Catholic Church were 
carefully codified, and measures were devised for the 
more effectual suppression of heresy wherever it showed 
itself. Shortly after the close of the council sittings, 
an interview took place at Bidassoa, on the frontier of 
Spain, between Catherine de Medicis, the queen- 
mother, and the Duke of Alva, the powerful minister 
of Philip II. of Spain, of sinister augury for the 
Protestants. When Philip succeeded to the throne of 
his father, Charles V., he inherited from him two 
passions — hatred of the Eeformed church and jealousy 
of France. To destroy the one and humiliate the 
other constituted the ambition of his life ; and to 
accomplish both objects, he spared neither the gold of 
the new world, nor the blood of his subjects. His 
first desire, however, was to crush Protestantism ; and 
it was to devise measures with that object, that the 
meeting between his favourite minister and Catherine 
de Medicis took place at Bidassoa. 

The queen-mother had by this time gone entirely 
round to the Guise party, and she had carried Charles 
IX., her son, with her. She had become equally de- 
sirous with the Duke of Alva to destroy heresy ; but 
while the Duke urged extermination of the Hugue- 
nots,* in accomplishing which he promised the help 
of a Spanish army, Catherine, on the contrary, was in 
favour of temporising with them. It might be easy 
for Philip to extirpate heresy by force in Spain or 



* The saying of the Duke of Alva mother. "Better," he said, "ahead 
is said to have alarmed the queen- of salmon than 10,000 heads of frogs." 



02 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. in. 



Italy, where the Protestants were few in number ; but 
the case was different in France, where the Huguenots 
had shown themselves able to bring large armies into 
the field, led by veteran generals, and actually held in 
possession many of the strongest places in France. She 
assured the duke, nevertheless, of her ardent desire to 
effect the ruin of the Eeformed party ; her only diffi- 
culty consisting in the means by which it was to be 
accomplished.* 

Shortly before this time, there had risen up in the 
bosom of the old church a man in all respects as 
remarkable as Luther, who exercised as extraordinary 
an influence, though in precisely the opposite direction, 
on the religious history of Europe. This was Ignatius 
Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who infused into 
his followers a degree of zeal, energy, devotion, and it 
must be added, unscrupulousness — stopping not to 
consider the means, provided the ends could be com- 
passed — which told most powerfully in the struggle 
of Protestantism for life or death throughout northern 
Europe. 

Loyola was born in 1491 ; he was wounded at the 
siege of Pampeluna in 1520 ; after a period of medi- 
tation and mortification, he devoted himself, in 1522, 
to the service of the church; and in 1540, the Order 
of the Jesuits was recognised at Eome and established 
by papal bull. The society early took root in France, 
where it was introduced by the Cardinal de Lorraine ; 
and it shortly acquired almost supreme influence in 

* Puaux, ii. p. 228. 



chap. nr. THE JESUITS IN FLANDERS. 63 

the state. Under the Jesuits, the Eoniish Church, 
reorganised and redisciplined, became one of the most 
complete of spiritual machines. They enjoined im- 
plicit submission and obedience. Against liberty they 
set up authority. To them the individual was nothing, 
the Order everything. They were vigilant sentinels, 
watching night and day over the interests of Kome. 
One of the first works to which they applied them- 
selves, was the extirpation of the heretics who had 
strayed from her fold. The principal instrument 
which they employed with this object was the Inquisi- 
tion; and wherever they succeeded in establishing 
themselves, that institution was set up, or was armed 
with fresh powers. They tolerated no half-measures. 
They were unsparing and unpitying ; and wherever a 
heretic was brought before them, and they had the 
power to deal with him, he must recant or die. 

The first great field in which the Jesuits put forth 
their new-born strength was Flanders, which then 
formed part of the possessions of Spain. The provinces 
of the Netherlands had reached the summit of com- 
mercial and manufacturing prosperity. They were 
inhabited by a hard-working, intelligent, and enter- 
prising people — great as artists and merchants, painters 
and printers, architects and iron-workers — as the 
decayed glories of Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, 
testify to this day. Although the two latter cities 
never completely recovered from the injuries inflicted on 
them by the tyranny of the trades-unions, there were 
numerous other towns, where industry had been left 



64 PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



comparatively free, in which the arts of peace were 
cultivated in security. Under the mild sway of the 
Burgundian dukes, Antwerp became the centre of the 
commerce of northern Europe ; and more business is 
said to have been done there in a month than at 
Venice in two years when at the summit of its 
grandeur. About the year 1550, it was no uncom- 
mon sight to see as many as 2500 ships in the 
Scheldt, laden with merchandise for all parts of the 
world. 

Such was the prosperity of Flanders, and such the 
greatness of Antwerp, when Philip II. of Spain 
succeeded to the rich inheritance of Burgundy on the 
resignation of Charles V. in the year 1556. Had his 
subjects been of the same mind with himself in 
religious matters, Philip might have escaped the 
infamy which attaches to his name. But a large 
proportion of the most skilled and industrious people 
in the Netherlands had imbibed the new ideas as to a 
reform in religion which had swept over northern 
Europe. They had read the newly translated Bible 
with avidity ; they had formed themselves into 
religious communities, and appointed preachers and 
teachers of their own : in a word, they were Pro- 
testants. 

Philip had scarcely succeeded to the Spanish 
throne, than he ordered a branch of the Inquisition to 
be set up in Flanders, with the Cardinal Grenvelle as 
Inquisitor-General. The institution excited great 
opposition amongst all classes, Catholic as well as 



CHAP. III. 



CIVIL WAR IN FLANDERS. 



05 



Protestant ; and it was shortly followed by hostility 
and resistance, which eventually culminated in civil 
war. Sir Thomas Gresham, writing to Cecil from 
Antwerp in 1566, said, "There are above 40,000 
Protestants in this toune, which will die rather than 
the word of God should be put to silence." 

The struggle which now began was alike fierce 
and determined on both sides, and extended over 
many years. The powerful armies which the king 
directed against his revolted subjects were led by 
able generals, by the Duke of Alva, by Alexander 
Farnese, Prince of Parma, and many more ; and 
although they did not succeed in establishing the 
Inquisition in the Netherlands, they succeeded in 
either exterminating or banishing the greater part of 
the Protestants south of the Scheldt, at the same 
time that they ruined the industry of Flanders, de- 
stroyed its trade, and reduced the Catholics themselves 
to beggary. Bruges and Ghent became crowded with 
thieves and paupers. The busy quays of Antwerp 
were deserted, and its industrious artizans, tradesmen, 
and merchants fled from the place, leaving their 
property behind them a prey to the spoiler* 

The Duchess of Parma, writing to Philip in 1567, 
said that "in a few days 100,000 men had already 
left the country with their money and goods, and that 
more were following every day." Clough, writing to 
Gresham from Antwerp in the same year, said — " It is 

* It is said that for some years the tries brought into the royal treasury 
pluuder of the murdered and pro- of Philip twenty millions of dollars 
scribed Protestants of the Low Coun- annually. 

F 



66 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



marveylus to see how the pepell packe away from 
liense ; some for one place, and some for another ; as 
well the papysts as the Protestants ; for it is thought 
that howsomever it goeth, it cannot go well here ; for 
that presently all the welthy and rich men of both 
sydes, who should be the stay of matters, make 
themselves away."* 

The Duke of Alva carried on this frightful war of 

o 

extermination and persecution for six years, during 
which he boasted that he had sent 18,000 persons to 
the scaffold, besides the immense numbers destroyed 
in battles and sieges, and in the unrecorded acts of 
cruelty perpetrated on the peasantry by the Spanish 
soldiery. Philip heard of the depopulation and ruin 
of his provinces without regret ; and though Alva was 
recalled, the war was carried on with increased fury 
by the generals who succeeded him. "What mainly 
comforted Philip was, that the people who remained 
were at length becoming terrified into orthodoxy. The 
ecclesiastics assured the Duke of Parma, the governor, 
that, notwithstanding the depopulation of the provinces, 
more people were coming to them for confession and 
absolution at the last Easter than had ever come since 
the beginning of the revolt. Parma immediately com- 
municated the consoling intelligence to Philip, who 
replied, "You cannot imagine my satisfaction at the 
news you give me concerning last Easter." t 

* Flanders Corres2)ondence — State- Netherlands (i. 490), where the story 
Paper Office. of Philip's war against his subjects in 

the Low Countries will he found re- 
f Motley — History of the United lated with remarkable power. 



chap. in. EMIGRA TION FROM FLANDERS. 



07 



The flight of the Protestants from the Low 
Countries continued for many years. All who were 
strong enough to fly, fled ; only the weak, the helpless, 
and the hopeless, remained. The fugitives turned their 
backs on Flanders, and their faces towards Holland, 
Germany, and England ; and fled thither with their 
wives and children, and what goods they could carry 
with them, to seek new homes. Several hundred 
thousands of her best artizans — clothiers, dyers, 
weavers, tanners, cutlers, and iron-workers of all 
kinds — left Flanders, carrying with them into the 
countries of their adoption, their skill, their intelli- 
gence, and their spirit of liberty. The greater number 
of them went directly into Holland, then gallantly 
struggling with Spain for its independent existence. 
There they founded new branches of industry, which 
eventually proved a source of wealth and strength to 
the United Provinces. Many others passed over into 
England, hailing it as "Asylum Christi," and formed 
the settlements of which some account will be given 
in succeeding chapters. 

Having thus led the reader up to the period at 
which the exodus of Protestants from the Low 
Countries took place, we return to France, where 
Catherine de Medicis was stealthily maturing her 
plans for stamping out heresy in the dominions of her 
son. The treaty of 1570 was still observed; the Pro- 
testants were allowed to worship God after their own 
forms ; and France was slowly recovering from the 
wounds which she had received during the recent 



68 PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



civil war. At this time Catherine de Medicis artfully 
contrived a marriage between her daughter Margaret 
and Henry of Beam, King of Navarre, chief of all the 
Huguenots. Henry's mother, Jeanne D'Albret, and 
the Admiral Coligny, concurred in the union, in the 
hope that it would put an end to the feuds which 
existed between the rival religious parties. Pope 
Pius Y., however, refused to grant the necessary dis- 
pensation to enable the marriage to be celebrated 
according to the rites of the Eoman Catholic Church ; 
but the queen-mother got over this little difficulty by 
causing a dispensation to be forged in the Pope's 
name/" 

As Catherine de Medicis had anticipated, the heads 
of the Eeformed party, regarding the marriage as an 
important step towards national reconciliation, resorted 
to Paris in large numbers, to celebrate the event and 
grace the royal nuptials. Among those present were 
Admiral Coligny and his family. Some of the Huguenot 
chiefs were not without apprehensions for their personal 
safety, and even urged the admiral to quit Paris. But 
he believed in the pretended friendship of the queen- 
mother and her son, and insisted on staying until the 
ceremony was over. The marriage was celebrated 
with great splendour in the cathedral church of Notre 
Dame on the 18th of August 1572,— the principal 
members of the nobility, Protestant as well as Eoman 
Catholic, being present on the occasion. It was 
followed by a succession of feasts and gaieties, in which 

* Vauvilliers — Histoire de Jeanne d'Albret. 



chap. in. MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW. 69 



the leaders of both parties alike participated; and 
the fears of the Huguenots were thus completely dis- 
armed. 

On the day after the marriage, a secret council 
was held, at which it was determined to proclaim a 
general massacre of the Huguenots. The king was 
now willing to give 50,000 crowns for the head 
of Coligny. To earn the reward, one Maurevert lay 
in wait for the admiral, on the 2 2d of August, in a 
house situated near the church of Saint Germain 
l'Auxerrois, between the Louvre and the Eue Bethisy. 
As the admiral passed, Maurevert fired and wounded 
him in the hand. Coligny succeeded in reaching his 
hotel, where he was attended by Ambrose Pare, who 
performed upon him a painful operation. The king 
visited the wounded man at his hotel, professed the 
greatest horror at the dastardly act which had been 
attempted, and vowed vengeance against the assassin. 

Meanwhile, the day fixed by the queen-mother for 
the general massacre of the Huguenots drew near. 
Between two and three o'clock in the morning of the 
24th of August 1572, as the king sat in his chamber 
with his mother and the Duke of Anjou, the great 
bell of the church of Saint Auxerrois rang to early 
prayer. It was the arranged signal for the massacre 
to begin ! Almost immediately after, the first pistol- 
shot was heard. Three hundred of the royal guard, 
who had been held in readiness during the night, 
rushed out into the streets, shouting " For God and the 
king." To distinguish themselves in the darkness, they 



70 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



wore a white sasli on their left arm, and a white cross 
in their hats. 

Before leaving the palace, a party of the guard 
murdered the retinue of the young King of Navarre, 
then the guests of Charles IX. in the Louvre. They 
had come in the train of their chief, to be present at the 
celebration of his marriage with the sister of the King 
of France. One by one, they were called by name 
from their rooms, marched down unarmed into the 
quadrangle, where they were hewed down before the 
very eyes of their royal host. A more perfidious 
butchery is probably not to be found recorded in 
history. 

At the same time, mischief was afoot throughout 
Paris. Le Charron, provost of the merchants, and 
Marcel, his ancient colleague, had mustered a large 
number of desperadoes, to whom respective quarters 
had been previously assigned, and they now hastened 
to enter upon their frightful mornings work. The 
Duke of Guise determined to anticipate all others in 
the murder of Coligny. Hastening to his hotel, the 
duke's party burst in the outer door ; and the admiral 
was roused from his slumber by the shots fired at his 
followers in the courtyard below. He rose from his 
couch, and though scarce able to stand, fled to an upper 
chamber. There he was tracked by his assassins, who 
stabbed him to death as he stood leaning against the 
wall. His body was then thrown out of the window 
into the court-yard. The Duke of Guise, who had 
been waiting impatiently below, hurried up to the 



chap. nr. MASSACRES THROUGHOUT FRANCE. 



71 



corpse, and wiping the blood from the admiral's face 
said, "I know him — it is he;" then, spurning the 
bod)' with his foot, he called out to his followers — 
" Courage, comrades, we have begun well : now for the 
rest ; the king commands it." They then rushed out 
again into the street. 

Firing was now heard in every quarter throughout 
Paris. The houses of the Huguenots, which had long 
been marked, were broken into ; and men, women, and 
children, were sabred or shot down. It was of no use 
trying to fly. The fugitives were slaughtered in the 
streets. The king himself seized his arquebus, and 
securely fired upon his subjects from the windows of 
the Louvre. For three days the massacre continued. 
Corpses blocked the doorways: mutilated bodies lay 
in every lane and passage ; and thousands were cast 
into the Seine, then swollen by a flood. At length, 
on the fourth day, when the fury of the assassins 
had become satiated, and the Huguenots were for the 
most part slain, a dead silence fell upon the streets 
of Paris. 

These dreadful events at the capital were almost 
immediately followed by similar deeds all over France. 
From fifteen to eighteen hundred persons were killed 
at Lyons, and the dwellers on the Phone below that 
city were horrified by the sight of the dead bodies 
floating down the river. Six hundred were killed at 
Eouen : and many more at Dieppe and Havre. The 
numbers killed during the massacre throughout France 
have been variously estimated. Sully says 70,000 were 



72 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



slain, though other writers estimate the victims at 
100,000. 

Catherine cle Medicis wrote in triumph to Alva, 
to Philip II., and to the Pope, of the results of the 
three days' dreadful work in Paris. When Philip 
heard of the massacre, he is said to have laughed for 
the first and only time in his life. Eome was thrown 
into a delirium of joy at the news. The cannon were 
fired at St. Angelo ; Gregory XIII. and his cardinals 
went in procession from sanctuary to sanctuary to give 
God thanks for the massacre. The subject was ordered 
to be painted, and a medal was struck, with the Pope's 
image on one side, and the destroying angel on the 
other immolating the Huguenots. Cardinal Orsini was 
despatched on a special mission to Paris to congratulate 
the king; and on his passage through Lyons, the 
assassins of the Huguenots there, the blood on their 
hands scarce dry, knelt before the holy man in the 
cathedral and received his blessing. At Paris, the 
triumphant clergy celebrated the massacre by a public 
procession; they determined to consecrate to it an 
annual jubilee on the day of Saint Bartholomew ; and 
they too had a medal struck in commemoration of the 
event, bearing the legend — "Piety has awakened 
justice !" 

As for the wretched young king of France, the 
terrible crime to which he had been a party weighed 
upon his mind to the last moment of his life. The 
recollection of the scenes of the massacre constantly 
haunted him; and he became restless, haggard, and 



CHAP. III. 



DEATH OF CHARLES IX. 



73 



miserable. He saw his murdered guests sitting by his 
side at bed. and at board. "Ambrose/'* said he to his 
confidential physician, " I know not what has happened 
to. me these two or three days past, but I feel my 
mind and body as much at enmity with each other as 
if I was seized with a fever. Sleeping or waking, the 
murdered Huguenots seem ever present to my eyes, 
with ghastly faces, and weltering in blood. I wish 
the innocent and helpless had been spared." He died 
in tortures of mind impossible to be described — 
attended in his last moments, strange to say, by a 
Huguenot physician and a Huguenot nurse; one of 
the worst horrors that haunted him being that his 
own mother was causing his death by slow poisoning, 



* Ambrose Pare had won the con- 
fidence and friendship of Charles IX. 
by saving him from the effects of a 
wound inflicted by a clumsy surgeon 
in performing the operation of vene- 
section. Pare, though a Huguenot, 
held the important office of surgeon- 
in-ordinary to the king, and was con- 
stantly about his person. To this 
circumstance he owed his escape from 
the massacre, the king concealing him 
during the night in a private room 
adjoining his own chamber. Palissy, 
of whom we have already spoken, 
most probably also owed his escape 
to the circumstance of his being in the 
immediate employment of Catherine 
de Medicis. But even employment at 
court did not secure the Huguenots in 
all cases against assassination. Thus, 
Jean Goujon, the sculptor, sometimes 
styled "the French Phidias," was 



shot from below while employed on a 
scaffold in executing the decorative 
work of the old Louvre. Some of the 
greatest early artists of Prance were 
Huguenots like Goujon ; for example, 
Jean Cousin, founder of the French 
school of painting ; Barthelemy 
Prieur, sculptor ; and Jean Bullant, 
Debrosses, and Du Cerceau, the cele- 
brated architects. Goudimel the 
musical composer, and Eamus the 
philosopher, were also slain in the mas- 
sacre. Before this time Eamus' house 
had been pillaged and his library de- 
stroyed. Dumoulin, the great juris- 
consult, had previously escaped by 
death. ' ' The execrable day of Saint 
Bartholomew," said the Catholic 
Chateaubriand, " only made martyrs ; 
it gave to philosophical ideas an ad- 
vantage over religious ideas which has 
never since been lost." 



74 



PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



an art in which he knew that great bad woman to be 
fearfully accomplished. 

To return to the surviving Huguenots, and the 
measures adopted by them for self-preservation. — 
Though they were at first stunned by the massacre, 
they were not slow to associate themselves together, 
in those districts in which they were sufficiently 
strong, for purposes of self-defence. Along the western 
sea-bord, at points where they felt themselves unable 
to make head against their persecutors, they put to 
sea in ships and boats, and made for England, where 
they landed in great numbers — at Eye, at Hastings, at 
Southampton, and the numerous other ports on the 
south coast. This was particularly the case with the 
artizans and skilled labour class, whose means of 
living are invariably imperilled by a state of civil 
war ; and they fled into England to endeavour if 
possible to pursue their respective callings in peace, 
while they worshipped God according to their 
conscience. 

But the Huguenot nobles and gentry would not 
and could not abandon their followers to destruction. 
They gathered together in their strong places, and pre- 
pared to defend themselves by force against force. In 
the Cevennes, Dauphiny, and other quarters, they be- 
took themselves to the mountains for refuge. In the 
plains of the south, fifty towns closed their gates 
against the royal troops. Wherever resistance was 
possible it showed itself. The little town of Sancerre 
held out successfully for ten months, during which the 



CHAP. III. 



ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. 



75 



inhabitants, without arms, heroically defended them- 
selves with slings, called " the arquebuses of Sancerre f 
enduring meanwhile the most horrible privations, and 
reduced to eat moles, snails, bread made of straw 
mixed with scraps of horse-harness, and even the 
parchment of old title-deeds. The Eoman Catholics, 
under the Duke of Anjou, also attacked Eochelle, and 
after great suffering and heroism on both sides, the 
assailants were repulsed and compelled to retire from 
the siege. While this civil war was in progress, the 
king died and was succeeded by Henry III., the same 
Duke of Anjou who had been repulsed from Eochelle. 
Henry of Navarre and the Prince of Conde now 
assumed the leadership of the Huguenots, and the 
wars of the League began, which kept France in a 
state of anarchy for many years, and were only 
brought to a conclusion by the succession of Henry IV. 
to the throne in 1594. 

So powerful, however, was the Eoman Catholic 
party in France, that Henry found it necessary to 
choose between his religion and his crown. In that 
age of assassination, he probably felt that unless he 
reconciled himself to the old church, his life was not 
safe for a day. Henry's religion at all times clung to 
him but loosely ; indeed, he was not a religious man in 
any sense ; for though magnanimous, large-hearted, and 
brave, he was given up, like most kings in those days, 
to the pleasures of the senses. He had become a 
Huguenot through political rather than religious 
causes, and it cost him little sacrifice to become a 



76 PERSECUTIONS OF THE REFORMED, chap. hi. 



Catholic. For the sake of peace, therefore, as well as 
for the sake of his own life, Henry conformed. But 
though he governed France ably and justly for a period 
of sixteen years, his apostasy did not protect him ; for 
after repeated attempts upon his life by emissaries of 
the Jesuits, he was eventually assassinated by Francis 
Eavaillac, a lay-brother of the monastery of St. 
Bernard, on the 14th of May 1610. 

One of Henry's justest and greatest acts was the 
promulgation, in 1598, of the celebrated Edict of 
Nantes. By that edict, the Huguenots, after sixty 
years of persecution, were allowed at last comparative 
liberty of conscience and freedom of worship. What 
the Eoman Catholics thought of it may be inferred 
from the protest of the Pope, Clement VIII., who 
wrote to say, that " a decree which gave liberty of 
conscience to all was the most accursed that had ever 
been made." 

Persons of the Eeformed faith were now admitted 
to public employment; their children were afforded 
access to the schools and universities ; they were pro- 
vided with equal representation in some of the pro- 
vincial parliaments, and permitted to hold a certain 
number of places of surety in the kingdom. And 
thus was a treaty of peace at length established for 
a time between the people of the contending faiths 
throughout France. 



CHAPTER IV. 



RELATIONS OF ENGLAND WITH FRANCE AND SPAIN. 

"While the rulers of France and Spain were making 
these desperate efforts to crush the principles of the 
Reformation in their dominions, the Protestants of 
England regarded their proceedings with no small 
degree of apprehension and alarm. Though the Re- 
formed faith had made considerable progress in the 
English towns at the period of Elizabeth's accession 
to the throne in 1558, it was still in a considerable 
minority throughout the country.* The great body 
of the nobility, the landed gentry, and the rural popu- 
lation, adhered to the old religion ; while there was a 
considerable middle class of Gallios, who were content 



* Soames, in his Elizabethan Religi- 
ous History, says that at the accession 
•of Elizabeth two-thirds of the people 
were Catholics. Butler, in his Me- 
moirs of the Catholics, holds the same 
view. On the other hand, Mr. Hallam, 
in his Constitutional History, estimates 
that in 1559 the Protestants were two- 
thirds of the population. Mr. Buckle, 
in an able posthumous paper which 
appeared in Frasers Magazine (Feb- 
ruary 1867), inclines to the view that 
the Protestants were still in the mi- 
nority. " Of the two great parties," 
he says, " one occupied the north and 
the other the south, and a line drawn 



from the Humber (to the mouth of 
the Severn ?) formed the boundary of 
their respective dominions. The Ca- 
tholics of the north were headed by 
the great families (of the Percies and 
Nevilles), and had on their side all 
those advantages which the prescrip- 
tion of ages alone can give. To the 
south were the Protestants, who, 
though they could boast of none of 
those great historical names which 
reflected a lustre on their opponents, 
were supported by the authority of the 
government, and felt that enthusiastic 
confidence which only belongs to a 
young religion." 



78 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



to wait the issue of events before declaring: themselves 
on either side. 

During the reigns which had preceded that of 
Elizabeth, the country had been ill-governed and the 
public interests neglected. The nation was in debt 
and unarmed, with war raging; abroad. But Eliza- 
beth's greatest difficulty consisted in the fact of her 
being a Protestant, and the successor of a Eoman 
Catholic queen who had reigned with undisputed 
power during the five years which preceded her ac- 
cession to the throne. No sooner had she become 
queen than the embarrassment of her position was at 
once felt. The Pope denied her legitimacy, and re- 
fused to recognise her authority. The bishops refused 
to crown her. The two universities united with Con- 
vocation in presenting to the House of Lords a declara- 
tion in favour of the papal supremacy. The King of 
France openly supported the claim of Mary Queen of 
Scots to the English throne ; and a large and influen- 
tial body of the nobility and gentry were her secret 
if not her avowed partisans. 

From the day of her ascending the throne, Eliza- 
beth was the almost constant object of plots formed to 
destroy her and pave the way for the re-establishment 
of the old religion. Elizabeth might possibly have 
escaped from her difficulties by accepting the hand 
of Philip II. of Spain, which was offered her. She 
refused, and determined to trust to her people. But 
her enemies were numerous, powerful, and active in 
conspiring against her authority ; and they had their 



chap. iv. RECLAMATION OF THE FUGITIVES. 



70 



emissaries constantly at the French, and Spanish courts, 
and at the camp of Alva in the Netherlands, urging 
the invasion of England and the overthrow of the 
English queen. 

One of the circumstances which gave the most 
grievous offence to the French and Spanish monarchs 
was the free asylum which Elizabeth offered in England 
to the Protestants flying from their persecutions abroad. 
Though those rulers would not permit their subjects to 
worship according to conscience in their own country, 
neither would they tolerate their leaving it to worship 
in freedom elsewhere. Conformity, not depopulation, 
was their object : but conformity by force if not by 
suasion. All attempts made by the persecuted to 
leave France or Flanders were accordingly interdicted. 
They were threatened with confiscation of their pro- 
perty and goods if they fled, and with death if they 
were captured. The hearts of the kings were hardened, 
and they " would not let the people go ! " But the sea 
was a broad and free road that could not be closed, and 
from all parts of the coasts of France and Flanders the 
tidings reached the monarchs of the escape of their 
subjects, whom they had failed either to convert or to 
kill. They could then but gnash then teeth and utter 
threats against the queen and the nation that had 
given their persecuted people asylum. 

The French king formally demanded that Elizabeth 
should' banish his fugitive subjects from her realm as 
rebels and heretics ; but he was impotent to enforce 
his demands, and the fugitives remained. The Spanish 



80 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN chap. iv. 



monarch, then called upon the Pope to interfere, and 
he in his turn tried to close the ports of England 
against foreign heretics. In a communication ad- 
dressed by him to Elizabeth, the Pope proclaimed the 
fugitives to be "drunkards and sectaries" — ebriosi et 
sextarii, — and declared " that all such as were the worst 
of the people resorted to England, and were by the 
queen received into safe protection " — ad qiiam velut ad 
asylum omnium impestissimi perfugium invenerunt. 

The Pope's denunciations of the refugees were 
answered by Bishop Jewel, who vindicated their 
character, and held^ them up as examples of industry 
and orderly living. " Is it not lawful," he asked, " for 
the Queen to receive strangers without the Popes 
warrant ?" Quoting the above-cited Latin passages, he 
proceeded : — " Thus he speaketh of the poor exiles of 
Flanders, France, and other countries, who either lost 
or left behind them all that they had, goods, lands, and 
houses — not for adultery, or theft, or treason, but for 
the profession of the Gospel. It pleased God here to 
cast them on land ; the Queen, of her gracious pity, 
hath granted them harbour. Is it so heinous a thing 
to show mercy V The bishop proceeded to retort 
upon the Pope for harbouring 6000 usurers and 20,000 
courtezans in his own city of Eome ; and he desired to 
know whether, if the Pope was to be allowed to enter- 
tain such " servants of the devil," the Queen of Eng- 
land was to be denied the liberty of receiving " a few 
servants of God?" "They are," he continued, "our 
brethren ; they live not idly. If they have houses of 



CHAP. IV. 



PLOTS OF MARY STUART. 



81 



us, they pay rent for them. They hold not our 
grounds but by making due recompense. They beg 
not in our streets, nor crave anything at our hands, 
but to breathe our air and to see our sun. They 
labor truefully, they live sparingly. They are good 
examples of virtue, travail, faith, and patience. The 
towns in which they abide are happy ; for God doth 
follow them with his blessings." * 

When the French and Spanish monarchs found that 
Elizabeth continued to give an asylum to their Pro- 
testant subjects, they proceeded to compass her death. 
Their ambassadors at the English Court acted as spies 
upon her proceedings, organised plots against her, and 
stirred up discontent on all sides. They found a ready 
instrument in the Queen of Scots, then confined in 
Tutbury Castle. Mary was not, however, held so strict 
a prisoner as to be precluded from carrying on an 
active correspondence with her partizans in England 
and Scotland, with the Duke of Guise and others in 

* Bishop Jewell's Works (Par- borgeois, marchants, et artizants des 
ker Society), pp. 1148, 1149. — The Pays Bas de povoir librement venir 
refugee Flemings also, in 1567, de- en cestun yostre royaume, et ses 
fended themselves against the charges retirer en villes lesquelles ils vous 
made against them, in a letter to plaira de nommer et designer a cest 
the Bishop of London, enclosed by effect et quelles il leur soit permit de 
him to Cecil (as preserved in the librement demeurer negotier et ex- 
State Paper Office), in which they re- ercer toutes sortes de stils et mestiers 
ferred to "the murders, pillories, chascun selon sa sorte et qualite ou 
massacres, imprisonments, re-baptisms quelque aultre quil estimera plus con- 
of little children, banishments, con- venable en regard au particuliers com- 
fiscations, and all sorts of ' desborde- modites des lieux et la charge touttefois 
ments ' executed against the faithful en condition que chascun apporte cer- 
subjects of the king in the Low tificate a l'apprusment du consistoire 
Countries, and supplicating grace and de l'Eglise de v're ville de Londres," 
licence" "a touts gentilshommes, etc. — State Papers, vol. xliii. 29. 



82 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



France, and with, the Duke of Alva and Philip II. in 
Flanders and Spain. Guilty though the Queen of 
Scots had been of the death of her husband, the Eoman 
Catholics of England regarded her as their rightful head, 
and were ready to rise in arms in her cause. 

Mary was an inveterate intriguer. We find her 
entreating the Courts of France and Spain to send 
her soldiers, artillerymen, and arms ; and the King 
of Spain to set on foot the invasion of England, with 
the object of dethroning Elizabeth and restoring the 
Eoman Catholic faith. Her importunities, as well as 
the fascinations of her person, were not without their 
effect upon those under her immediate influence ; and 
she succeeded in inducing the Duke of Norfolk, who 
cherished the hope of becoming her fourth husband, 
to undertake a scheme for her liberation. A con- 
spiracy of the leading nobles was formed, at the head 
of which were the Earls of Northumberland and 
Westmoreland ; and in the autumn of 1568 they 
raised the standard of revolt in the northern counties, 
where the power of the Eoman Catholic party was 
the strongest.* But the rising was speedily sup- 



* After having written to Pope 
Pius V., the Spanish ambassador, 
and the Duke of Alva, to request 
their assistance, and to advise that a 
port should be seized on the eastern 
coast of England, where it would be 
easy to disembark troops, 
they left Brancepath on the 14th of 
November, at the head of 500 horse- 
men, and marched towards Durham. 
The insurrection was entirely Catho- 
lic. They had painted Jesus Christ 



on the cross, with his five bleeding 
wounds, upon a banner borne by old 
Norton, who was inspired by the most 
religious enthusiasm. The people 
of Durham opened their gates and 
joined the rebels. Thus made mas- 
ters of the town, the insurgents pro- 
ceeded to the cathedral, burned the 
Bible, destroyed the Book of Common 
Prayer, broke in pieces the Protestant 
communion-table, and restored the 
old form of worship. — Mignet — His- 



chap. iv. THE POPE'S BULL AGAINST ELIZABETH. 



83 



pressed ; some of its leaders fled into Scotland, and 
others into foreign countries ; the Duke of Norfolk was 
sent to the Tower ; and the Queen's authority was for 
the time upheld. 

The Pope next launched against Elizabeth the 
most formidable missile of the Church- — a bull of 
excommunication — in which he declared her to be 
cut off, as the minister of iniquity, from the com- 
munity of the faithful, and forbade her subjects to 
recognise her as their sovereign. This document was 
found nailed up on the Bishop of London's door on 
the morning of the 15th of May 1570. The French 
and Spanish Courts now considered themselves at 
liberty to compass the life of Elizabeth by assassina- 
tion* The Cardinal de Lorraine, head of the Church 
in France, and the confidential adviser of the queen- 
mother, hired a party of assassins in the course of the 
same year, for the purpose of destroying Elizabeth, 
because of the encouragement she had given to 
Coligny and the French Huguenots. Again, the 
Duke of Alva, in his correspondence with Mary 
Queen of Scots and the leaders of the Eoman Catholic 



tory of Mary Queen of Scots, Lond. ed. 
1851, ii. 100. 

* Assassination was in those days 
regarded as the readiest method of 
getting rid of an adversary ; and in 
the case of an excommunicated per- 
son, it was regarded almost in the 
light of a religious duty. When the 
Regent Murray (of Scotland) was 
assassinated by Bothwellhaugh, in 
1570, Mary of Scots gave him a pen- 
sion. Many attempts were about 



the same time made on the life of 
William of Orange, surnamed "The 
Silent." One made at Mechlin, in 
1572, proved a failure ; but he was 
finally assassinated at Delft, in 1585, 
by Balthazar Gerard, an avowed agent 
of Philip II. and the Jesuits ; Philip 
having afterwards ennobled the family 
of the assassin. The wife of William 
of Orange, in whose arms he ex- 
pired, was a daughter of Admiral 
Coligny. 



84 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



party in England, insisted throughout that the first 
condition of sending a Spanish army to their assist- 
ance was the death of Elizabeth, 

Such was the state of affairs when the Bishop of 
Eoss, one of Mary's most zealous partisans, set on foot 
a conspiracy for the destruction of the Queen. The 
principal agent employed in communicating with 
foreign powers on the subject was one Eidolfi, a 
rich Florentine banker in London, director of the 
company of Italian merchants, and an ardent papist. 
Minute instructions were drawn up and intrusted to 
Eidolfi, to be laid by him before Pope Pius V. and 
Philip II. of Spain. On his way to Eome through 
the Low Countries, he waited on the Duke of Alva, 
and presented to him a letter from Mary Queen of 
Scots, beseeching him to furnish her with prompt 
assistance, with the object of "laying all this island" 
under perpetual obligations to his master the King of 
Spain as well as to herself, as the faithful executor of 
his commands.* 

At Eome, Eidolfi was welcomed by the Pope, who 
eagerly adopted his plans, and furnished him with a 
letter to Philip II., conjuring that monarch by his 
fervent piety towards God to furnish all the means he 
might judge most suitable for carrying them into 
effect. Eidolfi next proceeded to Madrid to hold 
an interview with the Spanish Court, and arrange for 
the murder of the English Queen. He was received 



* Prince Labanoff's Collection, iii. 216-220, cited by Mignet— History 
of Mary Queen of Scots, ii. 135. 



chap. iv. SPANISH PLOT AGAINST ELIZABETH. 85 



to a conference with the Council of State, at which 
were present the Pope's nuncio, the Cardinal Arch- 
bishop of Seville (Inquisitor-General) ; the Grand Prior 
of- Castille, the Duke of Feria, the Prince of Eboli, and 
other high ministers of Spain. Kidohi proceeded to 
lay his plan for assassinating Elizabeth before the 
Council* He said " the blow would not be struck in 
London, because that city was the stronghold of 
heresy, but while she was travelling." On the coun- 
cil proceeding to discuss the expediency of the pro- 
posed murder, the Pope's nuncio at once undertook to 
answer all objections. The one sufficient pretext, he 
said, was the bull of excommunication. The vicar of 
God had deprived Elizabeth of her throne, and the 
soldiers of the church were the instruments of his 
decree to execute the sentence of heaven against the 
heretical tyrant. On this, one Chapin Vitelli, who 
had come from Flanders to attend the council, offered 
himself as the assassin. He said, if the matter was in- 
trusted to him, he would take or kill the Queen. The 
councillors of state present then severally stated their 
views, which were placed on record, and are still to be 
seen in the archives at Simancas. 

Philip II. concurred in the plot, and professed 
himself ready to undertake the conquest of England 

* The minutes of this remarkable his History of Mary Queen of Scots, 
meeting of council were fully written published in 1851, since fully con- 
out by Zayas, Secretary of State, and firmed by Mr. Froude in his recently - 
are preserved in the archives of Sim- published History of England from 
ancas (Inglaterra, fol. 823). We fol- the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of 
low the account given by Mignet in Elizabeth, vol. iv. 



SG 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



by force if it failed ; but lie suggested that the Pope 
should supply the necessary money. Philip, however, 
was a man of hesitating purpose ; and, foreseeing the 
dangers of the enterprise, he delayed embarking in it, 
and eventually resolved on leaving the matter to the 
decision of the Duke of Alva * 

While these measures against the life of Elizabeth 
were being devised abroad, Mary Queen of Scots was 
diligently occupied at Chatsworth in encouraging a like 
plot at home with the same object. Lord Burleigh, 
however, succeeded in gaining a clue to the conspiracy, 
on which the principal agents in England were appre- 
hended, and the Queen was put upon her guard. The 
Spanish ambassador, Don G-erau, being found in secret 
correspondence with Mary, was warned to depart the 
realm ; his last characteristic act beiiw to hire two 
bravoes to assassinate Burleigh, and he lingered upon 
the road to Dover, hoping to hear that the deed had 
been done. But the assassins were detected in time, 
and instead of taking Burleigh's life, they only lost 
their own. 

The Protestant party were from time to time 
thrown into agonies of alarm by the rumour of these 
plots against the life of their queen ; and by the reported 
apprehension of agents of foreign powers arriving in 
England for the purpose of stirring up rebellion and 
preparing the way for the landing of the Duke of 
Alva and his army. The intelligence brought by the 
poor hunted Flemings, who had by this time landed in 

* Mignet — History of Mary Queen of Scots. 



chap. iv. INDIGNA TION OF THE ENGLISH NA TION. 87 



England in large numbers, and settled in London and 
the principal towns of the south, and the accounts 
which they spread abroad of the terrors of Philip's 
rule in the Low Countries, told plainly enough what 
the English Protestants had to expect if the threatened 
Spanish invasion succeeded. 

The effect of these proceedings was to rouse a 
general feeling of indignation against the foreign 
plotters and persecutors, and to evoke an active and 
energetic public opinion in support of the queen and 
her government. A large proportion of the English 
people were probably still in a great measure undecided 
as to their faith ; but their feeling of nationality was 
intense. The conduct of Elizabeth herself was doubt- 
less influenced quite as much by political as religious 
considerations ; and in the midst of the difficulties by 
which she was surrounded, her policy often seemed 
tortuous and inconsistent. The nation was, indeed, in 
one of the greatest crises of its fate ; and the Queen, 
her ministers, and the nation at large, every day more 
clearly recognised in the great questions at stake, not 
merely the cause of Protestantism against Popery, but 
of English nationality against foreign ascendency, and 
of resistance to the threatened yoke of Eome, France, 
and Spain. 

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, which shortly 
followed, exercised a powerful influence in determining 
the sympathies of the English people. The news of 
its occurrence called forth a general shout of execra- 
tion. The Huguenot fugitives who crowded for 



88 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



refuge into the southern ports, brought with them 
accounts of the barbarities practised on their fellow- 
countrymen, which filled the mind of the nation with 
horror. The people would have rushed willingly into 
a war to punish the perfidy and cruelty of the French 
Roman Catholics, but Elizabeth forbade her subjects 
to take up arms except on their own account as 
private volunteers. 

What the Queen s private feelings were, may be 
inferred from the reception which she gave to La 
Mothe Fenelon, the French ambassador, on his first 
appearance at Court after the massacre. For several 
days she refused to see him, but at length admitted 
him to an audience. The lords and ladies in waiting 
received him in profound, silence. They were dressed 
in deep mourning, and grief seemed to sit on every 
countenance. They did not deign to salute, or even 
to look at the ambassador, as he advanced towards the 
Queen, who received him with a severe and mournful 
countenance ; and, stammering out his odious apology, 
he hastened from her presence. Rarely, if ever, had a 
French ambassador appeared at a foreign court ashamed 
of the country he represented ; but on this occasion, La 
Mothe Fenelon declared, in the bitterness of his heart, 
that he blushed to bear the name of Frenchman. 

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew most probably 
sealed the fate of Mary Stuart. She herself rejoiced 
in it as a bold stroke for the faith, and, it might be, 
the signal for a like enterprise on her own behalf. 
Accordingly, she went on plotting as before, and in 



CHAP. IV. 



EXECUTION OF MARY STUART. 



SO 



1581 she was found engaged in a conspiracy with the 
Duke of Lennox for the re-establishment of popery 
in Scotland, under the auspices of the Jesuits.* These 
intrigues of the Queen of Scots at length became 
intolerable. Her repeated and urgent solicitations to 
the King of Spain to invade England with a view to 
the re-establishment of the old religion — the con- 
spiracies against the life of Elizabeth in which she 
was from time to time detected t — excited the vehe- 
ment indignation of the English nation, and eventually 
led to her trial and execution ; for it was felt that so 
long as Mary Stuart lived, the life of the English 
Queen, as well as the liberties of the English people, 
were in daily jeopardy. 



* Mignet — History of Mary Queen 
of Scots, ii. 207-12. 

f One of such conspiracies against 
the life of Elizabeth was that con- 
ducted by John Ballard, a Roman 
Catholic priest, in 1586. The prin- 
cipal instrument in the affair was one 
Anthony Babington, who had been 
for two years the intermediary corre- 
spondent between Mary Stuart, the 
Archbishop of Glasgow, and Paget 
and Morgan, his co - conspirators. 
Ballard, Babington, and the rest of 
the gang, were detected, watched, 
and eventually captured and con- 
demned, through the vigilance of 
Elizabeth's ever - watchful minister 
Walsingham. Mary had been kept 
fully advised of all their proceedings. 
Babington wrote to her in June 1587, 
explaining the intention of the con- 
spirators, and . enumerating all the 
means for getting rid of Elizabeth. 



"Myself in person," he said, "with 
ten gentlemen and a hundred others 
of our company and suite, will 
undertake the deliverance of your 
royal person from the hands of your 
enemies. As regards getting rid of 
the usurper, from subjection to whom 
we are absolved by the act of excom- 
munication issued against her, there 
are six gentlemen of quality, all of 
them my intimate friends, who, for 
the love they bear to the Catholic 
cause and to your Majesty's service, 
will undertake the tragic execution." 
In the same letter Babington re- 
quested Mary Stuart to appoint per- 
sons to act as her lieutenants, and 
raise the populace in Wales, and in 
the counties of Lancashire, Derby, 
and Stafford. This letter, with others 
to a like effect, duly came into the 
possession of Walsingham. — See Mig- 
net — History of Mary Queen of Scots. 



90 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chai\ iv. 



It is doubtless easy to condemn the policy of 
Elizabeth in this matter, now that we are living in 
the light of the nineteenth century, and peacefully 
enjoying the freedom won for us through the suffering 
and agony of our forefathers. But, in judging of the 
transactions of those times, it is right that allowance 
should be made for the different moral sense which then 
prevailed, as well as the circumstances amidst which 
the nation carried on its life-and-death struggle for 
independent existence. Eight is still right, it is true ; 
but the times have become completely changed, and 
public opinion has changed with them. 

In the meanwhile, religious persecutions continued 
to rage abroad with as much fury as before ; and 
fugitives from Flanders and France continued to take 
refuge in England, where they received protection and 
asylum. Few of the refugees brought any property 
with them ; the greater number were entirely desti- 
tute. But very many of them brought with them 
that kind of wealth which money could not buy — 
intelligence, skill, virtue, and the spirit of independ- 
ence ; those very qualities which made them hateful 
to their persecutors, rendering them all the mere 
valuable subjects in the countries of their adoption. 

A large part of Flanders, before so rich and so 
prosperous, had by this time become reduced almost 
to a state of desert. The country was eaten bare by 
the Spanish armies. Wild beasts infested the aban- 
doned dwellings of the peasantry, and wolves littered 
their young in the deserted farm-houses. Bruges and 



CHAP. IV. 



THE SACRED ARMADA. 



91 



Ghent became the resort of thieves and paupers. 
The sack of Antwerp in 1585 gave the last blow to 
the staggering industry of that great city ; and though 
many of its best citizens had already fled from it into 
Holland and England, one-third of the remaining 
merchants and workers in silks, damasks, and other 
stuffs, shook the dust of the Low Countries from their 
feet, and left the country for ever. 

Philip of Spain at length determined to take 
summary vengeance upon England. He was master 
of the most powerful army and navy in the world, 
and he believed that he could effect by force what he 
had been unable to compass by intrigue. The most 
stern and bigoted of kings, the great colossus of the 
Papacy, the duly-appointed Defender of the Faith, he 
resolved, at the same time that he pursued and pun- 
ished his recreant subjects who had taken refuge in 
England, to degrade and expel the sacrilegious occu- 
pant of the English throne. Accordingly, in 1588, he 
prepared and launched his Sacred Armada, one of the 
most powerful armaments that ever put to sea. It 
consisted of 130 ships, besides transports, carrying 
2650 great guns and 33,000 soldiers and sailors, 
besides 180 priests and monks under a Vicar-General 
of the Holy Inquisition. It was also furnished with 
chains and instruments of torture, and with smiths to 
set them to work — destined for the punishment of the 
pestilent heretics who had so long defied the power of 
Spain. 

This armament was to be joined in its progress by 



92 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



another equally powerful off the coast of Flanders, 
consisting of an immense fleet of flat-bottomed boats, 
carrying an army of 100,000 men, equipped with the 
best weapons and materials of war, who were to be 
conveyed to the mouth of the Thames under the 
escort of the great Spanish fleet. 

The expedition was ably planned. The Pope 
blessed it, and promised to co-operate with his money 
pledging himself to advance a million of ducats so soon 
as the expedition reached the British shores. At the 
same time, the bull issued by Pope Pius V., excom- 
municating Elizabeth and dispossessing her of her 
throne, was confirmed by Sextus V., and re-issued with 
additional anathemas. Setting forth un der such auspices, 
it is not surprising to find that Catholic Europe enter- 
tained the conviction that the expedition must neces- 
sarily be successful, and that Elizabeth and Protestantism 
in England were doomed to inevitable destruction. 

No measure could, however, have been better cal- 
culated than this to weld the English people of all 
ranks and classes, Catholics as well as Protestants, into 
one united nation. The threatened invasion of England 
by a foreign power — above all by a power so hated 
as Spain — roused the patriotic feeling in all hearts. 
There was a general rising and arming by land and 
by sea. Along the south coast the whole maritime 
population arrayed themselves in arms ; and every 
available ship, sloop, and wherry, was manned and 
sent forth to meet and fight the Spaniards. 

The result is matter of history. The Sacred and 



CHAP. IV. 



PHILIP II. AND ELIZABETH. 



93 



Invincible Armada was shattered by the ships of Drake, 
Hawkins, and Howard, and finally scattered by the 
tempests of the Almighty. The free asylum of Eng- 
land was maintained ; the hunted exiles were thence- 
forward free to worship and to labour in peace ; and 
the beneficent effects of the addition of so many 
skilled, industrious, and free- minded men to our popu- 
lation, are felt in England to this day. 

Philip II. of Spain died in 1598, the same year in 
which Henry IV. of France promulgated the edict of 
Nantes. At his accession to the Spanish throne in 
1556, Philip was the most powerful monarch in Europe, 
served by the ablest generals and admirals, with an 
immense army and navy at his command. At his 
death, Spain was distracted and defeated, with a 
bankrupt exchequer ; Holland was free, and Flanders 
in ruins. The intellect and energies of Spain were 
prostrate ; but the priests were paramount. The only 
institution that flourished throughout the dominions of 
Philip, at his death, was the Inquisition. 

Elizabeth of England, on the other hand, succeeded, 
in 1558, to an impoverished kingdom, an empty 
exchequer, and the government of a distracted people, 
one-half of whom denied, and were even ready to 
resist, her authority. England was then without 
weight in the affairs of Europe. She had no army, 
and her navy was contemptible. After a reign of 
forty-five years, the aspect of affairs had become com- 
pletely changed. The nation was found firmly united, 
content, free, and prosperous. An immense impulse 



'94 



ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. chap. iv. 



had been given to industry. The intellect of the 
people had become awakened, and a literature sprang 
up, which is the wonder even of modern times. The 
power of England abroad was everywhere recognised. 
The sceptre of the seas was wrested from Spain, and 
England thenceforward commanded the high-road to 
America and the Indies. 

The Queen was supported by able ministers, though 
not more able than those who surrounded the King of 
Spain. But the spirit that moved them was wholly 
different — the English monarch encouraging freedom, 
the Spanish repressing it. As the one was the founder 
of modern England, so the other was of modern Spain. 

It is true, Elizabeth did not rise to the high idea 
of complete religious liberty. But no one then did — 
not even the most advanced thinker. Still, the founda- 
tions of such liberty were laid, while industry was fos- 
tered and protected. It was accomplishing much to 
have done this. The rest was the work of experience 
working under an atmosphere of freedom. 



CHAPTER V. 



SETTLEMENTS AND INDUSTRIES OF THE PROTESTANT 
REFUGEES. 

The early English were a pastoral and agricultural, 
and by no means a manufacturing people. In the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, most articles of 
clothing, excepting such as were produced by ordinary 
domestic industry, were imported from Flanders, France, 
and Germany.* The great staple was wool, which was 
sent abroad in vast quantities. " The ribs of all people 
throughout the world," wrote Matthew Paris, " are kept 
warm by the fleeces of English wool." 

The wool and its growers were on one side of the 
Channel, and the skilled workmen who dyed and 



* Besides the cloth of Flanders, 
England was also supplied with most 
of its finer fabrics from abroad — the 
names of the articles to this day in- 
dicating the places where they were 
manufactured. Thus, there was the 
mechlin lace of Mechlin, the duffle of 
Duffel, the diaper of Ypres (d'Ypres), 
the cambric of Cambray, the arras of 
Arras, the tulle of Tulle, the damask 
of Damascus, and the dimity of Dia- 
metta. Besides these, we imported 
delph ware from Delft, Venetian glass 
from Venice, cordovan leather from 



Cordova, and milanery from Milan. 
The Milan ers of London were a 
special class of general dealers. They 
sold not only French and Flemish 
cloths, but Spanish gloves and girdles, 
Milan caps and cutlery, silk, lace, 
needles, pins for ladies' dresses (be- 
fore which skewers were used), swords, 
knives, daggers, brooches, glass, por- 
celain, and various articles of foreign 
manufacture. The name of "milli- 
ner" (from Milaner) is now applied 
only to dealers in ladies' caps and 
bonnets. 



90 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



wove it into cloth, were on the other. When war 
broke out, and communication between the two shores 
was interrupted, as much distress was occasioned in 
Flanders as was lately experienced in Lancashire 
by the stoppage of the supply of cotton from the 
United States. On one occasion, in the fourteenth 
century, when the export of wool from England was 
prohibited, the effect was to reduce the manufacturing 
population throughout the Low Countries to destitu- 
tion and despair. " Then might be seen throughout 
Flanders," says the local historian, " weavers, fullers, 
and others living by the woollen manufacture, either 
begging, or, driven by debt, tilling the soil."* 

At the same time, like distress overtook the English 
wool-growers, who lost the market for their produce, 
on which they had been accustomed to rely. It 
naturally occurred to the English kings that it would 
be of great advantage to this country to have the wool 
made into cloth by the hands of their own people, 
instead of sending it abroad for the purpose. They 
accordingly held out invitations to the distressed 
Flemish artizans to come over and settle in England, 
where they would find abundant employment at 
remunerative wages ; and as early as the reign of 
Edward III. a large number of Flemings came over 
and settled in London, Kent, Norfolk, Devon, Somer- 
set, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Westmoreland.! 

The same policy was pursued by successive Eng- 



* Meyer — Annates Flandrice, p. 137. 
+ Appendix. — Early Settlement of Foreign Artizans in England. 



chap. v. IXFLUX OF FOREIGN ARTIZAXS. 



97 



lish kings, down to the reign of Henry VIII., who 
encouraged skilled artizans of all kinds to settle in 
England, as armourers, cutlers, miners, brewers, and 
shipbuilders; the principal craftsmen employed by the 
court being, Flemings and Germans. The immi- 
gration of foreigners persecuted for conscience' sake 
began in the reign of his successor Edward VI., after 
which there was no longer any necessity for holding 
out invitations to skilled artizans of other countries 
to settle among us. Latimer, preaching before the 
king on one occasion, shrewdly observed of the dis- 
tressed foreigners then beginning to flow into the 
country — f< I wish that we could collect together such 
valuable persons in this kingdom, as it would be the 
means of insuring its prosperity." Very few years 
passed before Latimer's wish was fully realised ; and 
there was scarcely a town of any importance in. 
England in which foreign artizans were not found 
settled and diligently pursuing their several callings. 

The immigration of the Protestant Flemings in 
Edward VI.'s reign was so considerable, that in 1550 
the king gave them the church in Austin Friars, 
Broad Street, " to have their service in, and for avoid- 
ing all sects of anabaptists and the like." The 
influx continued at such a rate as to interfere with 
the employment of the native population, who occa- 
sionally showed a disposition to riot, and even to 
expel the foreigners by violence. In a letter written 
by Francis Peyto to the Earl of AVarwick, then at 
Rome, the following passage occurs : — "Five or six 

H 



98 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



hundred men waited upon the mayor and aldermen, 
complaining of the late influx of strangers, and that, 
by reason of the great dearth, they cannot live for 
these strangers, whom they were determined to kill 
up through the realm if they found no remedy. To 
pacify them, the mayor and aldermen caused an 
esteame to be made of all strangers in London, which 
showed an amount of forty thousand, besides women 
and children, for the most part heretics fled out of 
other countries."* Although this estimate was pro- 
bably a gross exaggeration, there can be no doubt 
that by this time a large number of the exiles had 
arrived and settled in London and other English 
towns. 

The influx of the persecuted Protestants, however, 
did not fully set in until about ten years later, about 
the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. The fugitives, 
in the extremity to which they were reduced, naturally 
made for that part of the English coast .which lay the 
nearest to Flanders and France. In 1561, a consider- 
able body of fugitive Flemings landed near Deal, and 
subsequently settled at the then decayed town of 
Sandwich. The Queen was no sooner informed of 
their landing, than she wrote to the mayor, jurats, and 
commonalty of the burgh, enjoining them to give 
liberty to the foreigners to settle there and carry on 
their respective trades. She recommended the mea- 
sure as calculated to greatly benefit the town by 
" plantynge in the same men of knowledge in sundry 

* Calendar of Staie Papers, Foreign Series, 1547-53. 



chap. v. LANDINGS OF PERSECUTED PROTESTANTS. 99 



handy crafts," in which they " were very skilful and 
her Majesty more particularly enjoined that the trades 
the foreign artizans were to carry on, were "the makinge 
of says, bays, and other cloth, which hath not been 
used to be made in this our realme of Englonde." 

Other landings of Flemings took place about the 
same time at Harwich, at Yarmouth, at Dover, and 
other towns on the south-east coast. Some settled at 
the places where they had landed, and began to pursue 
their several branches of industry ; while others pro- 
ceeded to London, Norwich, Maidstone, Canterbury, 
and other inland towns, where the local authorities 
gave them like protection and succour. 

The year after the arrival of the Flemings at Sand- 
wich, the inhabitants of the little seaport of Eye, on 
the coast of Sussex, w T ere thrown into a state of com- 
motion by the sudden arrival of a number of destitute 
French people from the opposite coast. Some came in 
open boats, others in sailing vessels. They were of all 
classes and conditions, and amongst them were many 
women and children. They had fled from their own 
country in great haste, and were nearly all alike 
destitute. Some crossed the Channel in mid-winter, 
braving the stormiest weather ; and when they reached 
the English shore they usually fell upon their knees and 
thanked God for their deliverance. 

In May 1562, we find John Young, mayor of Eye, 
writing to Sir William Cecil, the Queen s chief secre- 
tary, as follows : — May it please your honor, there is 
daily great resort of Frenchmen here, insomuch as 



100 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



already there is esteemed to be 500 persons ; and we 
be in great want of corn for their and our sustentation, 
by reason the country adjoining is barren. . . . Also 
may it please your honor, after night and this day is 
come two shippis of Dieppe into this haven, full of 
many people." * 

It will be remembered that Eye is situated at the 
south-western extremity of the great Romney Marsh ; 
and as no corn was grown in the neighbourhood, the 
wheat consumed in the place was all brought thither 
by sea, or from a distance inland over the then almost 
impassable roads of Sussex. The townspeople of Rye 
nevertheless bestirred themselves in aid of the poor 
refugees. They took them into their houses, fed them, 
and supplied their wants as well as they could ; but 
the fugitives continued to arrive in such numbers 
that the provisions of the place soon began to run 
short. 

These landings continued during the summer of 
1562 ; and even as late as November the mayor again 
wrote to Cecil : " May it please your honor to be ad- 
vertised that the third day of the present month, at 
twelve of the clocke, there arrived a bote from Dieppe, 
with Frenchmen, women, and children, to the number 
of a hundred and fiftye ; there being a great number 
also which were here before." And as late as the 10th 
of December, the French people still flying for refuge, 
though winter had already set in severely, the mayor 
again wrote that another boat had arrived with "maney 

* Domestic State Papers— Elizabeth, 1562. No. 35. 



CHAP. V. 



ARRIVALS AT RYE. 



101 



poor people, as well men and women as children, 
which were of Eouen and Dieppe." 

Six years passed, and again, in 1568, we find another 
boat-load of fugitives from France landing at Eye : 
" Monsieur Gamayes, with his wife and children and 
ten strangers ; and Captain Sows, with his wife and 
two servants, who had all come out of France, as they 
said, for the safeguard of their lives." Four years 
later, in 1572, there was a further influx of refugees at 
Eye, the mayor again writing to Lord Burleigh, in- 
forming him that between the 27th of August and the 
4th of November no fewer than 641 had landed. The 
records have been preserved of the names and callings 
of most of the immigrants, from which it appears that 
they were of all ranks and conditions, including gentle- 
men, merchants, doctors of physic, ministers of religion, 
students, schoolmasters, tradesmen, mechanics, artizans, 
shipwrights, mariners, and labourers. Among the 
fugitives were also several widows, who had fled with 
their children across 1 the sixty miles of sea which there 
divide France and England, sometimes by night in open 
boats, braving the fury of the winds and waves in 
their eagerness to escape.* 

The mayor of Eye made appeals to the Queen for 
help, and especially for provisions, which from time to 
time ran short, and the help was at once given. 
Collections were made for the relief of the destitute 
refugees in many of the churches in England, as well 

* W. Dupjiant Coopek — Paper in xiii. p. 179, entitled, " The Protest- 
Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. ant Refugees in Sussex." 



102 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



as Scotland ;* and, among others, we find the refugee 
Flemings at Sandwich giving out of their slender 
means "a benefaction to the poor Frenchmen who 
have left their country for conscience' sake."t 

These landings continued for many years. The 
people came flying from various parts of France and 
Flanders — cloth-makers from Antwerp and Bruges, 
lace-makers from Valenciennes, cambric-makers from 
Cambray, glass-makers from Paris, stuff-weavers from 
Meaux, merchants and tradesmen from Eouen, and 
shipwrights and mariners from Dieppe and Havre. 
As the fugitives continued to land, they were sent 
inland as speedily as possible, to make room for new- 
comers, as the household accommodation of the little 
towns along the English coast was but limited. From 
Eye, many proceeded to London to join their country- 
men who had settled there ; others went forward to 
Canterbury, to Southampton, to Norwich, and the 
other towns where Walloon congregations had already 
been established. A body of them settled at Winchel- 
sea, an ancient town, formerly of much importance % 



* James Melville, in his diary, 
mentions that subscriptions were 
raised for French Protestants in indi- 
gent circumstances in 1575 ; and Cal- 
derwood has a similar notice in 1622. 

+ Borough Eecords of Sandwich, 
1572. 

X It will be remembered that 
Thackeray, who was fond of visiting 
Winchelsea, laid the early scenes of 
his novel of Denis Duval among the 
French immigrants of the place. 



Winchelsea, now a village amidst 
ruins, was once a flourishing seaport. 
The remains of the vaults and ware- 
houses where the merchants' goods 
were stored are still pointed out, and 
the wharfs may still be seen where 
ships discharged their cargoes, lying 
with their broadsides to the shore. 
The place is now some miles from 
the sea, and sheep and cattle graze 
over a wide extent of marsh-land, 
over which the tide formerly washed. 



CHAP. V. 



ARRIVALS AT DOVER. 



103 



on the south coast, though now left high and dry 
inland. 

Many fugitives also landed at Dover, which was a 
convenient point for both France and Flanders. Some 
of the immigrants passed through to Canterbury and 
London, while others settled permanently in the place. 
Early in the seventeenth century, a census was taken 
of the foreigners residing in Dover, when it was found 
that there were seventy-eight persons " which of late 
came out of France by reason of the troubles there." 
The description of them is interesting, as showing the 
classes to which the exiles principally belonged. There 
were two "preachers of Gods Word ';" three physicians 
and surgeons ; two advocates ; two esquires ; three 
merchants ; two schoolmasters ; thirteen drapers, gro- 
cers, brewers, butchers, and other trades; twelve 
mariners ; eight weavers and wool- combers ; twenty- 
five widows, "makers of bone-lace and spinners;" two 
maidens ; one woman, designated as the wife of a shep- 
herd ; one button-maker ; one gardener ; and one unde- 
scribed male.* There were at the same time settled in 
Dover thirteen Walloon exiles, of whom five were mer- 
chants, three mariners, and the others of different trades. 

In the meantime, the body of Flemings who had 
first settled at Sandwich began to show signs of con- 
siderable prosperity. The local authorities had readily 
responded to the wishes of Queen Elizabeth, and did 
what she required. They appointed two markets to 
be held weekly for the sale of their cloths, in making 

* Bom. Col.— James I. 1622. 



104 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



which we very shortly find them busily occupied. 
When Archbishop Parker visited Sandwich in 1563, 
he took notice of " the French and Dutche, or both," 
who had settled in the town, and wrote to a friend at 
court that the refugees were as godly on the Sabbath 
days as they were industrious on week-days ; observing 
that such " profitable and gentle strangers ought to be 
welcome, and not to be grudged at."* 

Before the arrival of the Flemings, Sandwich had 
been a poor and decayed place. It was originally a 
toAvn of considerable importance, and one of the Cinque 
Ports. But when the river Stour became choked 
with silt, the navigation, on which it had before de- 
pended, was so seriously impeded that its trade soon 
fell into decay, and the inhabitants were reduced to 
great poverty. No sooner, however, had the first 
colony of Flemings, above four hundred in number, 
settled there under the Queen s protection, than the 
empty houses were occupied, the town became instinct 
with new life, and was more than restored to its former 
importance. The artizans set up their looms, and 
began diligently to work at the manufacture of sayes, 
bayes, and other kinds of cloth, which met with a 
ready sale ; the London merchants resorting to the 
bi-weekly markets, and buying up the goods at re- 
munerative prices. 

The native population also shared in the general 
prosperity ; learning from the strangers the art of 
cloth-making, and becoming competitors with them for 

* Strype's Parker, p. 139. 



CHAP. V. 



THE FLEMINGS AT SANDWICH. 



105 



the trade. Indeed, before many years had passed, the 
townspeople, forgetful of the benefits they owed to 
the foreign artizans, became jealous, and sought to 
impose upon them special local taxes. On this the 
Flemings memorialised the Queen, who again stood 
their friend ; and, on her intercession, the corporation 
were at length induced to relieve them of the unjust 
burden* At this time they constituted about one- 
third of the entire population of the town ; and when 
Queen Elizabeth visited Sandwich in 1573, it is re- 
corded that " against the school-house, upon the new 
turfed wall, and upon a scaffold made upon the wall 
of the school-house yard, were divers children, to the 
number of a hundred or six score, all spinning of fine 
bag yarn, a thing well liked both of her Majesty and 
of the Nobility and Ladies." f 

The Protestant exiles at Sandwich did not, how- 
ever, confine themselves to cloth-making ,J but engaged 
in various other branches of industry. Some of them 



* The memorial, which is still pre- 
served amongst the town records, con- 
cludes with the following prayer : 
' ' Which condition (viz. the local im- 
position on the foreign settlers) is 
suche, that by means of their chardges 
they should finally be secluded and 
syndered from the hability of those 
manifolde and necessary contributions 
which yet in this our exile are prac- 
tised amongst us, as well towards the 
maintenance of the ministry of God's 
word as lykewise in the sustentation 
of our poore, besydes the chardges first 
above rehearsed : performyng there- 



fore our foresayde humble petition, we 
shall be the more moved to directe 
our warmest prayers to our mercy full 
God, that of his heavenly grace he 
will beatify your common weall more 
and more, grauntynge to ytt his 
spiritual and temporal blessyngs, 
which he gracefully powreth uppon 
them that showe favour and consola- 
tion to the poore afflicted straungers." 
— Boys' History of Sandwich, p. 744. 

+ Antiquarian Repertory, iv. 65. 

% The principal trades which they 
followed were connected with the 
manufacture of cloths of different 



106 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



were millers, who erected the first windmills near the 
town in which they plied their trade. Two potters 
from Delft began the pottery-manufacture. Others 
were smiths, brewers, hatmakers, carpenters, or ship- 
wrights. Thus trade and population increased • new 
buildings arose on all sides, until Sandwich became 
almost transformed into a Flemish town ; and to this 
day, though fallen again into comparative decay, the 
quaint, foreign-looking aspect of the place never fails 
to strike the modern visitor with surprise. 

Among other branches of industry introduced by 
the Flemings at Sandwich, that of gardening is worthy 
of notice. The people of Flanders had long been 
famous for their horticulture, and one of the first 
things which the foreign settlers did on arriving in 
the place was to turn to account the excellent qualities 
of the soil in the neighbourhood, so well suited for 
gardening purposes. Though long before practised by 
the monks, gardening had become almost a lost art in 
England; and it is said that Katherine, queen of Henry 
VIII., unable to obtain a salad for her dinner in all 
England, had her table supplied from the Low Coun- 
tries.* The first Flemish gardens proved highly suc- 

kinds. Thus, of 351 Flemish house- Hull then carried on a thriving im- 

holders resident in Sandwich in 1582, port-trade in cabbages and onions. 

86 were bay-makers, 74 bay -weavers, The rarity of vegetables in the country 

17 fullers, 24 linsey-wolsey weavers, may be inferred from the fact that in 

and 24 wool-combers. 1595 a sum equal to twenty shillings 

* Vegetables were formerly so scarce was paid at that port for six cabbages 

that they were salted down. Even in and a few carrots by the purveyor 

the sixteenth century a cabbage from for the Clifford family (Whitakee, — 

Holland was deemed an acceptable History of Graven, 321). Hartlib, 

present (Fox's Life of James II. 205). writing in 1650, says that an old man 



CHAP. V. 



THE REFUGEES IN LONDON. 



107 



cessful. The cabbage, carrots, and celery produced by 
the foreigners met with so ready a sale, and were so 
much in demand in London itself, that a body of gar- 
deners shortly removed from Sandwich and settled at 
Wandsworth, Battersea, and Bermondsey, where many 
of the rich garden-grounds first planted by the Fle- 
mings continue to this day the most productive in the 
neighbourhood of the metropolis. 

As might naturally be expected, by far the largest 
proportion of the Protestant exiles — Flemish and 
French — settled in London : — London, the world's 
asylum — the refuge of the persecuted in all lands, 
whether for race, or politics, or religion — a city of 
Celts, Danes, and Saxons — of Jews, Germans, French, 
and Flemings, as well as of English — an aggregate of 
men of all European countries, and probably one of 
the most composite populations to be found in the 



tli en living remembered "the first 
gardener who came into Surrey to 
plant cabbages and cauliflowers, and 
to sow turnips, carrots, and parsnips, 
and to sow early pease — all of which 
at that time were great wonders, we 
having few or none in England but 
what came from Holland or Flanders." 
It is also supposed, though it cannot 
be exactly ascertained, that the Pro- 
testant Walloons introduced the cul- 
tivation of the hop in Kent ; bring- 
ing slips of the plant with them from 
Artois. The old distich — 

" Hops, Reformation, Bays, and Beer, 
Came into England all in one year " — 

marks the period (about 1524) when 
the first English hops were planted. 
There is a plot of land at Bourne, near 



Canterbury, where there is known to 
have been a hop-plantation in the 
reign of Elizabeth. Keginald Scot, 
the author of The Perfite Platforme of 
a Hoppe Garden, speaks of "the trade 
of the Flemminge" (i.e. his method 
of culture), and his " ostes at Popper - 
ing" as "a profytable patterne and 
a necessarie instruction for as manie 
as shall have to doe therein." Another 
kind of crop introduced by the Flem- 
ings at Sandwich was canary-grass, 
which still continues to be grown on 
the neighbouring farms, and is indeed 
almost peculiar to the district. It 
may be added that to this day the 
" Sandwich celery " maintains its re- 
putation. 



103 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



world. Large numbers of French, Germans, and 
Flemings, of the industrious classes, had already taken 
refuge in London from the political troubles which had 
lono; raged abroad. About the beoinnino- of the reign 

© © o o o 

of Henry VIII. so many foreigners had settled in the 
western parts of London, that " Tottenham is turned 
French" passed into a proverb ;* and now the religious 
persecutions which raged abroad compelled foreigners 
of various nations to take refuge in London in still 
greater numbers than at any former period. 

Fortunately for London, as for England, the men 
who now fled thither for refuge were not idle, disso- 
lute, and ignorant, but peaceable, gentle, and laborious. 
Though they were poor, they were not pauperised, but 
were thrifty and self-helping, and above all things 
eager in their desire to earn an honest living. They 
were among the most skilled and intelligent inhabitants 
of the countries which had driven them forth. Had 
they been weak men, they would have gone with the 
stream as others did, and conformed ; but they were 
men with convictions, earnest and courageous, and ready 
to brave all perils in their determination to find some 
land of refuge, in which they might be permitted to wor- 
ship God according to the dictates of their conscience. 

Of the Flemings and French who settled in London, 
the greater part congregated in special districts, for 



* Tottenham is turned French. — artizans, which caused the insurrec- 

About the beginning of Henry VIII. tion in London on Ill-Mayday 1517. 

French mechanics swarmed in Eng- — England's JForthies in Church and 

land, to the great prejudice of English State, Lond. 1684, p. 471. 



chap. v. THE FLEMINGS IN SOUTHWARK. 



109 



the convenience of carrying on their trades together. 
Thus a large number of the Flemings settled in South- 
wark and Bermondsey, and began many branches of 
industry which continue there to this day, Southwark 
being still the principal manufacturing district of Lon- 
don. There was a quarter in Bermondsey, known as 
" The Borgeney," or " Petty Burgundy," because of the 
foreigners who inhabited it. Joiner's Street, which still 
exists in name, lay in the district, and was so called 
because of its being almost wholly occupied by Flemish 
joiners, who were skilled in all kinds of carpentry.* 
Another branch of trade begun by the Flemings in 
Bermondsey, was the manufacture of felts or hats. 
Tanneries and breweries were also started by them, 
and carried on with great success. Henry Leek, origi- 
nally Hoek or Hook,t from Wesel, was one of the 
principal brewers of his time, to whose philanthropic 
bequest Southwark owes the foundation of the ex- 
cellent free school of St. Olave's — one of the best of its 
class. 

Another important settlement of the Flemings was 



* " At St. Olave's in Southwark, you 
shall learn, among the joyners, what 
inlayes and marquetrie weare. Inlaye 
(as the word imports) is a laying of 
coloured wood in their wainscot works, 
bedsteads, cupboards, chayres, and the 
like."— Bolton, Elements of 'Armories \ 
1610. 

" The Flemish burying-ground," 
appropriated to the foreigners as a 
place of sepulture, was situated near 
the south end of London Bridge. 
It is now covered by the approach 



to the London Bridge Railway Sta- 
tion. 

t Many of the foreigners adopted 
names of English sound, so that it is 
now difficult to trace them amidst 
the population in which they have be- 
come merged. Thus, in the parish 
church of Allhallows, Barking, we 
find the monument of a distinguished 
Fleming, one Roger Haestrecht, who 
changed his name to James. He was 
the founder of the family of James, of 
Ightham Court, in Kent. 



110 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



that at Bow, where they established dye-works on a 
large scale. Before their time, white cloth of English 
manufacture was usually sent abroad to be dyed, after 
which it was reimported and sold as Flemish cloth. 
The best known among the early dyers were Peter de 
Croix and Dr. Kepler, the latter of whom established 
the first dye- work in England ; and cloth of " Bow 
dye" soon became famous. Another body of the 
refugees settled at Wandsworth, and began several 
branches of industry, such as the manufacture of felts, 
and the making of brass plates for culinary utensils, 
which Aubrey says they "kept a mystery." One Fro- 
mantel introduced the manufacture of pendulum or 
Dutch clocks, which shortly came into common use. 
At Mortlake the French exiles began the manufacture 
of arras, and at Fulham of tapestry. The art of print- 
ing paperhangings was introduced by some artizans 
from Eouen, where it had been originally practised ; 
and many other skilled workers in metal settled in dif- 
ferent parts of the metropolis, as cutlers, jewellers, and 
makers of mathematical instruments, in which the 
French and Flemish workmen then greatly excelled* 

The employment given to the foreign artizans 
seems to have excited considerable discontent amongst 
the London tradesmen, who, from time to time, be- 
seeched the interference of the corporations and of 

* A French refugee, named Briot, after his time, in the reign of Charles 

was the first to introduce the coining- II., another Frenchman, named Blon- 

press, which was a French invention, deau, was selected to superintend the 

into England. He was appointed chief stamping of our English money, 
engraver to the Mint ; and forty years 



chap. v. THE FOREIGN MERCHANTS IN LONDON. Ill 



Parliament. Thus, in 1576, we find the London shoe- 
makers petitioning for a commission of inquiry as to 
the alien shoemakers who were carrying on their trade 
in the metropolis. In 1586, the London apprentices 
raised a riot in the city against the foreigners ; and 
several youths of the Plaisterers' Company were ap- 
prehended and committed to Newgate by order of 
the Queen and council. A few years later, in 1592, 
the London freemen and shopkeepers complained to 
Parliament that the strangers were spoiling their 
trades ; and a bill was brought in for the purpose of 
restraining them. The bill was strongly supported by 
Sir Walter Kaleigh, who complained bitterly of the 
strangers ; but it was opposed by Cecil and the Queen s 
ministers ; and though it passed the Commons, it failed 
through the dissolution of Parliament, so that the 
refugees were left to the enjoyment of their former 
protection and hospitality.* 

Many of the foreigners established themselves as 
merchants in the city, and soon became known as 
leading men in commercial affairs. Several of them 
had already been distinguished as merchants in their 
own country ; and they brought with them a spirit and 
enterprise which infused quite a new life into London 
business. Among the leading foreign merchants of 
Elizabeth's time we recognise the names of Houblon, 
Palavicino, De Malines, Corsellis, Van Peine, Try an, 
Buskell, Cursini, De Best, and Cotett. And that they 
prospered by the exercise of their respective callings 

* Burn — History of the Protestant Ref ugees, p. 10. 



112 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chai\ v. 



may be inferred from the circumstance that when, in 
1588, Queen Elizabeth proceeded to raise a loan in the 
city by voluntary subscriptions, thirty- eight of the 
foreign merchants subscribed among themselves £5000 
in sums of £100 and upwards. 

The accounts given of the numbers of the exiles 
from Flanders and France who then settled in London 
are very imperfect ; yet they enable us to form some 
idea of the extensive character of the immigration. 
Thus, a return of the population, made in 1571, the 
year before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, shows 
that in the city of London alone (exclusive of the 
large number of strangers settled in Southwark, at 
Bow, and outside the liberties) there were, of foreigners 
belonging to the English church, 889 ; to the Dutch, 
French, and Italian churches, 1763 ; certified by their 
elders, but not presented by the wards, 1828 ; not yet 
joined to any particular church, 2663 ; "strangers that 
do confesse themselves that their comyng h ether was 
onlie to seek worck for their lyvinge," 2561 ; or a 
total of 9704 persons* From another return of about 
the same date, in which the numbers are differently 
given, we obtain some idea of the respective nationali- 
ties of the refugees. Out of the 4594 strangers then 
returned as resident in the city of London, 3643 are 



* State Papers, Dom. — Elizabeth, 
vol. 84, anno 1571. It appears from 
the Bishop of London's certificate of 
1567 (four years before), that the 
number of persons of foreign birth 
then settled in London was 4851, 



and 512 French. There were at the 
same time in London 36 Scots, 128 
Italians, 23 Portuguese, 54 Spaniards, 
10 Venetians, 2 Blackamoors, and 2 
Greeks. 



CHAP. V. 



IN LONDON AND NORWICH. 



113 



described as Dutch (i.e. Flemings) ; 657 French; 233 
Italians ; and 53 Spaniards and Portuguese.* 

That the foreign artizans continued to resort to 
England in increasing numbers is apparent from a fur- 
ther census taken in 1621, from which it appears that 
there were then 10,000 strangers in the city of Lon- 
don alone, carrying on 121 different trades. Of 1343 
persons whose occupations are specified, there were 
found to be 1 1 preachers, 16 schoolmasters, 349 weavers, 
183 merchants, 148 tailors, 64 sleeve-makers, 43 shoe- 
makers, 39 dyers, 37 brewers, 35 jewellers, 25 diamond- 
cutters, 22 cutlers, 20 goldsmiths, 20 joiners, 15 clock- 
makers, 12 silk-throwsters, 10 glass-makers, besides 
hemp-dressers, thread-makers, button -makers, coopers, 
engravers, gunmakers, painters, smiths, watchmakers, 
and other skilled craftsmen.*)* 

Numerous other settlements of the refugees took 
place throughout England, more particularly in the 
southern counties. " The foreign manufacturers," says 
Hasted, "chose their situations with great judgment, dis- 
tributing themselves with the Queen's licence through- 
out England, so as not to interfere too much with each 
other."J One of the most important of such settle- 
ments was that formed at Norwich, where they founded 
and carried on many important branches of trade. 

Although Norwich had been originally indebted 
mainly to foreign artizans for its commercial and 

* State Papers, Bom. Elizabeth, vol. Edited by William Durrant Cooper, 
82, anno 1571. F.S.A. Camden Society's Papers, 1862. 

+ Lists of .Foreign Protestants and % Hasted, History of Kent, x. p. 
Aliens resident in England, 1618-88. 160. 

I 



114 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



manufacturing importance, the natives of this city 
were among the first to turn upon their benefactors. 
The local guilds, in their usual narrow spirit, passed 
stringent regulations directed against the foreign arti- 
zans, who had originally taught them their trade. The 
jealousy of the native workmen was also roused, and 
riots were stirred up against the Flemings, many of 
whom left Norwich for Leeds and Wakefield in York- 
shire, where they prosecuted the woollen-manufacture 
free from the restrictions of the trades-unions,* while 
others left the country for Holland, to carry on their 
trades in the free towns of that country. 

The consequence was that Norwich, left to its native 
enterprise and industry, gradually fell into a state of stag 
nation and decay. Its population rapidly diminished ; 
a large proportion of the houses stood empty ; riots 
among the distressed work-people were of frequent oc- 
currence; and it was even mooted in Parliament 
whether the place should not be razed. Under such 
circumstances, the corporation determined to call to 
their aid the skill and industry of the exiled Protest- 
ant artizans now flocking into the country. In the 
year 1564, a deputation of the citizens, headed by the 
mayor, waited on the Duke of Norfolk at his palace in 
the city, and asked his assistance in obtaining a set- 

* In the reign of Henry VII. an at- enjoining that hats were only to he 

tempt was made hy a hody of Flem- manufactured in some city, borough, 

ings to establish the manufacture of or market-town, the Flemings were 

felt hats at Norwich. To evade the thereby brought under the bondage of 

fiscal regulations of the guilds, they the guilds ; the making of hats by 

settled outside the boundaries of the them was suppressed ; and the Flem- 

city. But an act having been passed ish hat-makers left the neighbourhood 



chap. v. THE FLEMINGS IN NORWICH. 115 

tlement in the place of a body of the Flemish workmen. 
The duke used his influence with this object, and 
succeeded in inducing some 300 Dutch and Walloon 
families to settle in the place at his charge, and to cany 
on their trades under a licence granted by the Queen. 

The exiles were very shortly enabled, not only 
to maintain themselves by their industry, but to 
restore the city to more than its former prosperity. 
The houses which had been standing empty were again 
tenanted, the native population were again fully em- 
ployed, and the adjoining districts shared in the 
general prosperity. In the course of a few years, as 
many as 3000 of the foreign workmen had settled in 
the city, and many entirely new branches of trade were 
introduced and successfully carried on by them. Be- 
sides the manufacture of sayes, bayes, serges, arras, 
mouchade, and bombazines, they introduced the strip- 
ing and flowering of silks and damasks, which shortly 
became one of the most thriving branches of trade in 
the place. The manufacture of beaver and felt hats, 
before imported from abroad, was also successfully 
established. One Anthony Solen introduced the art of 
printing, for which he was awarded the freedom of the 
city. Two potters from Antwerp, Jasper Andries and 
Jacob Janson, started a pottery, though in a very 
humble way.* Other Flemings introduced the art of 

* Stowe makes the following refer- persecution there, and settled them- 

ence to these men in his Survey of selves in Norwich, where they fol- 

London: — " About the year 1567 Jas- lowed their trade, making galley pav- 

per Andries and Jacob Janson, potters, ing-tiles and apothecaries' vessels, and 

came away from Antwerp to avoid the others, very artificially. Anno 1570 



116 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



gardening in the neighbourhood, and culinary stuffs 
became more plentiful in Norwich than in any other 
town or city in England. The general result was — 
abundant employment, remunerative trade, cheap food, 
and great prosperity ; Bishop Parkhurst declaring his 
persuasion that " these blessings from God have hap- 
pened by reason of the godly exiles who were here 
so kindly harboured." 

But not so very kindly after all. As before, the 
sour native heart grew jealous; and notwithstanding 
the admitted prosperity of the place, the local popula- 
tion began to mutter discontent against the foreigners, 
who had been mainly its cause. Like Jeshurun, 
the people had waxed fat and they kicked. It is 
true, the numbers of Dutch, French, and Walloons 
in Norwich had become very considerable, by reason 
of the continuance of the persecutions abroad, which 
drove them across the Channel in increasing numbers. 
But who so likely to give them succour and shelter as 
their own countrymen, maintaining themselves by the 
exercise of their skill and industry in the English towns ? 
The opposition which displayed itself against the foreign 



they removed to London. They set the liberties of London by the water- 
forth, in a petition to Queen Eliza- side." The brothers Elers, afterwards, 
beth, that they were the first that in 1688, began the manufacture of a 
brought in and exercised the said better sort of pottery in Staffordshire, 
science in this realm, and were at They were natives of Nuremberg in 
great charges before they could find Germany. In 1710 they removed 
the materials in the realm. They from Staffordshire, and settled in 
beseeched her, in recompense of their Lambeth or Chelsea. To these bro- 
great cost and charges, that she would thers is ascribed the invention of the 
grant them house-room in or without salt-glaze. 



chap. v. CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE FLEMINGS. 117 



artizans is even said to have been encouraged by some 
of the "gentlemen" of the neighbourhood, who in 1570 
set on foot a conspiracy, with the object of expelling 
them by force from the city and realm. But the con- 
spiracy was discovered in time. Its leader and instiga- 
tor, John Throgmortorj, was seized and executed, with 
two others ; and the strangers were thenceforward per- 
mitted to pursue their respective callings in peace. 

Whatever may have been the shortcomings of 
Elizabeth in other respects, she certainly proved herself 
the steadfast friend and protector of the Protestant 
exiles from first to last. Her conduct with reference 
to the Norwich conspiracy clearly shows the spirit 
which influenced her. In a letter written by her from 
the palace at Greenwich, dated the 19th March 1570, 
she strongly expostulated with the citizens of Norwich 
against the jealousy entertained by them against the 
authors of their prosperity. She reminded them of 
the advantages they had derived from the settlement 
amongst them of so many skilled artizans, who were 
inhabiting the houses which had before stood desolate, 
and were furnishing employment to large numbers of 
persons who must otherwise have remained unem- 
ployed. She therefore entreated and enjoined them 
to continue their favours "to the poor men of the 
Dutch nation, who, seeing the persecution lately begun 
in their country for the trewe religion, hath fledd into 
this realm for succour, and be now placed in the city 
of Norwich, and hath hitherto been favourablye and 
jintely ordered, which the Queen's Majestie, as a 



118 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



mercifull and religious Prince, doth take in very good 
part, praeing you to continue your favour unto them 
so long as they shall lyve emongste you quyetlye and 
obedyently to God's trewe religion, and to Her Majesty's 
lawes, for so one chrystian man (in charitie) is bound 
to help another, especially them who do sufFre afflixion 
for the gospelle's sake."* 

A census was shortly after taken of the foreigners 
settled in Norwich, when it was ascertained that they 
amounted to about 4000, including women and child- 
ren ; and that they were effectually protected in the 
exercise of their respective callings, and continued to 
prosper, may be inferred from the circumstance that, 
when the numbers were again taken, about ten years 
later, it was found that the foreign community had in- 
creased to 4679 persons. 

It would occupy too much space to enter into a 



* The following is a copy of a do- 
cument in the State Paper Office 
(Dom. Eliz. 1561), giving an account 
of ' 1 the benefite recey ved by the 
strangers in Norwich for the space of 
tenne yeres." Several passages of the 
paper have been obliterated by age : — 

"Inprimis, They brought a grete 
comoditie thether — viz. the making of 
bayes, moucades, grograynes, all sorts 
of tufts, &c. — w ch were not made 
there before, whereby they do not 
onely set on worke their owne people, 
but [do also] set on worke o r - owne 
people w th in the cittie, as alsoe a grete 
nomber of people nere xx ti myles 
aboute the cittie, to the grete relief 
of the [poorer] sorte there. 



" Item, By their means o r - cittie [is 
well inhabited, o r -] decayed houses re- 
edified & repaired that [were in 
rewyn and more wolde be]. And now 
good rents [are] paide for the same. 

"Item, The marchants by their 
comoditi[es have] and maye have grete 
trade as well w^in the realme as 
w^oute the [realme], being in good 
estimacon in all places. 

"Item, It cannot be, but whereas a 
nomber of people be but the one re- 
ceyve comoditie of the other as well 
of the cittie as men of the countrie. 

"Item, They be contributors to all 
paym ts , as subsidies, taskes, Avatches, 
contribusions, mynisters' wagis, etc. 

" Item, O 1 '- owne people do practice 



chap. v. NEW INDUSTRIES ESTABLISHED. 119 



detailed account of the settlement of the industrious 
strangers throughout the country, and to describe the 
various branches of manufacture which they intro- 
duced in addition to those already described. " The 
persecution for religion in Brabant and Flanders," says 
Hasted, " communicated to all the Protestant parts of 
Europe the paper, woollen, and other valuable manu- 
factures of Flanders and France, almost peculiar at 
that time to these countries, and till then in vain 
practised elsewhere." * Although the manufacture of 
cloth had already made some progress in England, 
only the coarser sorts were produced, the best being 
imported from abroad ; and it was not until the 
settlement among us of the Flemish weavers that this 
branch of industry became one of national importance. 
They spread themselves through the towns and vil- 
lages in the w r est of England, as well as throughout 
the north, and wherever the woollen-w T eavers set up 
their looms they carried on a prosperous trade, t 
Among other places in the west, they settled at Wor- 



& make suche comodities as tlie 
strangers do make, whereby the 
youthe is set on worke and kept from 
idlenes. 

"Item, They digge & delve a nom- 
ber of acres of gronnde, & do sowe 
flaxe & do make it out in lynnen 
clothe, w ch set many on worke. 

"Item, They digge & delve a grete 
quantitie of grouncle for rootes, [w ch ] 
is a grete succor & sustenance for the 
[pore], both for themselves as for all 
others of cittie and countrie. 

' : Item, They live holy of them- 



selves w th out [o r - chardge], and do 
begge of no man, & do sustayne [all 
their owne] poore people. 

"And to conclude, they for the [moste 
pte feare] God &. diligently & labo- 
riously attende upon their several oc- 
cupations, they obay all maiestratis 
& all good lawes & ordynances, they 
live peaceblie amonge themselves & 
towards all men, & we thinke o r - cittie 
happy to enioye them." 

* Hasted, History of Kent, x. p. 
160. 

t Fuller specifies the following 



120 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



cester, Evesham, Droitwitch, Kidderminster, Stroud, 
and Glastonbury.* In the east they settled at Col- 
chester, t Hertford, Stamford, and other places. In 
the north we find them establishing themselves at 
Manchester, Bolton, and Halifax, where they made 
"coatings; "J and at Kendal, where they made cloth 
caps and woollen stockings. The native population 
gradually learned to practise the same branches of 



textile manufactures as having been 
established by the immigrants : — 
In Norwich, cloths, fustians, etc. 

,, Sudbury, baizes. 

,, Colchester, sayes and serges. 

,, Kent, Kentish broad-cloths. 

,, Devonshire, kerseys. 

,, Gloucestershire ") 

„ Worcestershire j clotlls - 

,, Wales, Welsh friezes. 

,, Westmoreland, Kendal cloth. 

,, Lancashire, coatings or cottons. 

,, Yorkshire, Halifax cloths. 

,, Somerset, Taunton serges. 
Hants ) 

,, Berks r cloth. 

,, Sussex ' 

* A settlement of Flemish woollen- 
weavers took place at Glastonbury as 
early as 1549, through the influence 
of the Duke of Somerset, who ad- 
vanced them money to buy wool, at 
the same time providing them with 
houses and small allotments of land 
from the domain of the Abbey, which 
the king had granted him. After the 
fall of the duke the weavers were 
protected by the Privy Council, and 
many documents relating to them are 
to be found in the State Paper Office. 
— (Edwd. VI., Dom. xiii. 71-77, and 
xiv. 2-11 and 55). 



f Colchester became exceedingly 
prosperous in consequence of the 
settlement of the Flemish artizans 
there. In 1609 it contained as many 
as 1300 Walloons and other persons 
of foreign parentage, and every house 
was occupied. 

X The "coatings" or "cottons" of 
Lancashire were in the first instance 
but imitations in woollen of the goods 
known on the Continent by that name ; 
the importation of cotton wool from 
the Levant having only begun, and 
that in small quantities, about the 
middle of the seventeenth century. 
" There is one fact," says the editor of 
the Shuttleworth Papers, "which seems 
to show that the Flemings, after their 
immigration, had much to do with the 
fulling-mill at Manchester; for its ordi- 
nary name was the ' walken-milne ' — 
vjalche being the Flemish name for a 
fulling-mill. So persistent do we find 
this name, that a plot of land occu- 
pied by a mill on the banks of the 
Irk still retains its old name of the 
Walker's Croft (i.e. the fuller's field 
or ground), and in the earlier Man- 
chester directories, the fullers were 
styled 'walkers.'" — House and Home 
Accounts of the Shuttleworth Family ; 
(Chetham Society Papers, 1S56-8), pp. 



CHAP. V. 



THE LACE MANUFACTURE. 



121 



manufacture ; new sources of employment were opened 
up to them ; and in the course of a few years, England, 
instead of depending upon foreigners for its supply of 
cloth, was not only able to produce sufficient for its 
own use, but to export the article in considerable 
quantities abroad. 

Other Flemings introduced the art of thread and 
lace making. A body of them who settled at Maid- 
stone, in 1567, carried on the thread-manufacture, flax 
spun for the thread-man being still known there as 
" Dutch work." Some lace-makers from Alen^on and 
Valenciennes settled at Cranfield, in Bedfordshire, in 
1568 ; after which others settled at Buckingham, 
Stoney-Stratford, and Newport-Pagnel, from whence 
the manufacture gradually extended over the shires 
of Oxford, Northampton, and Cambridge. About the 
same time the manufacture of bone-lace, with thread 
obtained from Antwerp, was introduced into Devon- 
shire by the Flemish exiles, who settled in considerable 
numbers at Honiton, Colyton, and other places, where 
the trade continued to be carried on by their descend- 
ants almost to our own time— the Flemish and French 
names of Stocker, Murch, Spiller, Genest, Maynard, 
Gerard, Raymunds, Rochett, Kettel, etc., being still 
common in the lace-towns of the west. 

Besides these various branches of textile manufac- 
ture, the immigrants applied themselves to mining, 

637-8. [The name of Walker, so com- calling, which was followed by so 

mon in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and considerable a portion of the popula- 

the clothing districts of the west of tion.] 
England, doubtless originated in this 



122 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



working in metals, salt-making, fish-curing, and other 
arts, in which they were much better skilled than the 
English then were. Thus, we find a body of them 
from the neighbourhood of Liege establishing them- 
selves at Shotley Bridge, in the neighbourhood of 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, where they introduced the making 
of steel, and became celebrated for the swords and 
edge-tools which they manufactured. The names of 
the settlers, some of which have been preserved — Ole, 
Mohl, Vooz, etc. — indicate their origin, and some of 
their descendants are still to be found residing in the 
village, under the names of Oley, Mole, and such like. 

Mr. Spencer read a paper on the " Manufacture of 
Steel" at the meeting of the British Association at 
Newcastle in 1863, in which he thus referred to these 
early iron-workers : — 

" In the wall of an old two-storey dwelling-house, the original 
materials of which are hidden under a coat of rough-cast, there 
still exists a stone above the doorway with an inscription in bad 
German, to the following effect : — des. herren. secen. machet. 

REICH. OHN. ALLF. SORC. WAN. DVZVGLEICH. IN. DEINEM. STAND. 
TREVW. VND-LLEISIC. BIST. VND. DVEST. WAS. DIR. BELOHLEN. 1ST. 

1691, of which the following is a free translation, showing that 
the original importers of the steel-manufacture to the district 
were probably good Lutherans, who had suffered persecution for 
conscience' sake : — " The blessing of the Lord makes rich without 
care, so long as you are industrious in your vocation, and do 
what is ordered you." 

There is, however, a much earlier reference to the 
immigrants in the parish register of Ebchester Church, 
which contains the entry of a baptism in 1628 of the 
daughter of one Mathias Wrightson Ole or Oley — the 



THE FLEMINGS IN SHEFFIELD. 



123 



name indicating a probable marriage of the grandfather 
of the child into a native family of the name of 
Wrightson, and thereby marking the third generation 
in the neighbourhood. 

Another body of skilled workers in iron and steel 
settled at Sheffield under the protection of the Earl of 
Shrewsbury, on condition that they should take Eng- 
lish apprentices and instruct them in their trade. 
What the skill of the Low Country iron-workers was, 
will be understood by any one who has seen the 
beautiful specimens of ancient iron-work to be met 
with in Belgium — as, for instance, the exquisite iron 
canopy over the draw-well in front of the cathedral at 
Antwerp, or the still more elaborate iron gates enclos- 
ing the little chapels behind the high altar of the 
cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent. Only the Nurem- 
bergers, in all Germany, could then vie with the 
Flemings in such kind of work. The effects of the 
instruction given by the Flemish artizans to their 
Sheffield apprentices were soon felt in the impulse 
which the improvement of their manufactures gave to 
the trade of the town ; and Sheffield acquired a 
reputation for its productions in steel and iron which 
it retains to this day. 

A body of refugees of the seafaring class established 
themselves at Yarmouth in 1568, with the Queens 
licence, and there carried on the business of fishing 
with great success. Before then, the fish along the 
English coasts were mostly caught by the Dutch, who 
cured them in Holland, and brought them back for 



124 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



sale in the English markets. But shortly after the 
establishment of the fishery at Yarmouth by the 
Flemings, the home demand was almost entirely 
supplied by their industry. They also introduced the 
arts of salt-making and herring-curing, originally a 
Flemish invention ; and the trade gradually extended 
to other places, and furnished employment to a large 
number of persons. 

By the enterprise chiefly of the Flemish merchants 
settled in London, a scheme was set on foot for the 
reclamation of the drowned lands in Hatfield Chase 
and the great level of the Fens ;* and a large number of 
labourers assembled under Cornelius Yermuyden to 
execute the necessary works. They were, however, a 
very different class of men from the modern " navvies," 
for wherever they went they formed themselves into 
congregations, erected churches, and appointed minis- 
ters to conduct their worship. Upwards of two hun- 
dred Flemish families settled on the land reclaimed by 
them in the Isle of Axholm ; the ships which brought 
the immigrants up the Humber to their new homes 
being facetiously hailed as "the navy of Tarshish." 
The reclaimers afterwards prosecuted their labours, 
under Yermuyden, in the great level of the Fens, where 
they were instrumental in recovering a large extent of 
drowned land, before then a mere watery waste, but 
now among the richest and most fertile land in Eng- 
land. In short, wherever the refugees settled they 
acted as so many missionaries of skilled work, exhibit- 

* Lives of the Engineers, i. 15-65. 



CHAP. V. 



THE FLEMINGS IN IRELAND. 



125 



ing the best practical examples of diligence, industry, 
and thrift, and teaching the English people in the 
most effective manner the beginnings of those various 
industrial arts in which they have since acquired so 
much distinction and wealth. 

Besides the numerous settlements of the foreigners 
throughout England, others passed over into Ireland, 
and settled in Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, Belfast, 
and other towns. Sir Henry Sidney, in the " Memoir 
of his Government in Ireland," written in 1590, thus 
speaks of the little colony of refugees settled at Swords, 
near Dublin : — "I caused to plant and inhabit there 
about fourtie families of the Keformed Churches of the 
Low Countries, flying thence for religion s sake, in one 
ruinous town called Swords ; and truly, sir, it would 
have done any man good to have seen how diligently 
they wrought, how they re-edified the quite spoiled 
ould castell of the same town, and repayred almost all 
the same, and how godlie and cleanly they, their wiefs, 
and children lived. They made diaper and tickes for 
beddes, and other good stuffes for man's use ; and as ex- 
cellent leather of deer skynnes, goat and sheep fells, as 
is made in South warke." * 

In the early part of the reign of James I. many 
Flemings and French obtained grants of naturalisation 
in Ireland ; and it was about this time that the De- 
renzie (now De Kinzy), Olfertson (now Olferts), Van- 
homrigh, and Vandeleur families, settled in that 
country. The unsettled state of Ireland was not 

See Ulster Journal of Archaeology, v. p. 306. 



126 SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap, v 



encouraging to industry; nevertheless the strangers 
seem eventually to have obtained a footing and made 
steady progress. 

When the Earl of Strafford was appointed chief 
deputy in the reign of Charles I., he applied himself 
with much energy to the establishment of the linen- 
manufacture ; sending to Holland for flax-seed, and in- 
viting Flemish and French artizans to settle in Ireland. 
In order to stimulate the new industry, the earl him- 
self embarked in it, and expended not less than 
£30,000 of his private fortune in the enterprise. It 
was afterwards made one of the grounds of his im- 
peachment that " he had obstructed the industry of the 
country by introducing new and unknown processes 
into the manufacture of flax." * It was nevertheless 
greatly to the credit of the earl that he should have 
endeavoured to improve the industry of Ireland by intro- 
ducing the superior processes employed by the foreign 
artizans ; and had he not attempted to turn the im 
proved flax-manufacture to his own advantage by erect- 
ing it into a personal monopoly, he might have been 
entitled to regard as a genuine benefactor of Ireland. t 

Not many of the refugees found their way into 



* Foster, Lives of Eminent British weavers, supplying them with looms 

Statesmen, ii. 385. and raw material ; and a considerable 

trade in cordage, sail-cloth, and linen, 

+ The first Duke of Ormonde, imi- shortly grew up. The duke also 

tating the example of Strafford, in like settled large colonies of Walloons at 

manner established about five hundred Clonmell, Kilkenny, and Carrick-on- 

immigrants at Chapel Izod, in Kil- Suir, where they established, and for 

kenny, under Colonel Richard Law- some time successfully carried on, the 

rence. He there built houses for the manufacture of woollen cloths. 



chap, v, THE REFUGEES IN SCOTLAND. 127 



Scotland.""' That countiy was then too poor to hold 
out much encouragement to the banished artizans. 
An attempt was, however, made about the beginning 
of the seventeenth century to introduce into Scotland 
the manufacture of cloth ; and in 1601, seven Flemings 
were engaged to settle in the country and set the 
work agoing — six of them for serges, and one for 
broad-cloth. But disputes arose amongst the boroughs 
as to the towns in which the settlers were to be located, 
during which the strangers were " entertained in meat 
and drink." f At length, in 1609, a body of Flemings 
became settled in the Canongate of Edinburgh under 
one Joan Van Heclan, where they engaged in " making, 
dressing, and litting of stuffis, giving great licht and 
knowledge of their calling to the country people." % 

An attempt was also made to introduce the manu- 
facture of paper in Scotland about the middle of the 
seventeenth century, and French workmen were intro- 
duced for the instruction of the natives. The first 
mill was erected at Dairy, on the Water of Leith, but 
though they succeeded in making grey and blue paper, 
the speculation does not seem to have answered, as we 
find Alexander Daes, one of the principal proprietors, 
shortly after occupied in showing an elephant about 
the country ! — the first animal of the kind that had 
been seen north of the Tweed.§ 

* Michelet, the French historian, f ChambePuS — Domestic Annals of 

says he found at Holyrood the decayed Scotland, i. p. 351. 

tombstone of a Frenchman, who had J Ibid. i. p. 421. 

been the first paviour in Edinburgh, § Ibid. ii. pp. 390-410. — The art of 

and probably in Scotland. paper-making was not successfully 



128 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. v. 



Although the number of foreigners who had mi- 
grated from Flanders, France, and other European 
countries into England, down to about the middle of 
the seventeenth century, had been very large, it had 
by no means ceased. Every fresh outburst of persecu- 
tion abroad was followed by renewed landings of the 
persecuted on our shores. Whereas the number of 
persons of foreign birth established in the city of Lon- 
don in 1567 included 4851 Flemings and 512 French, 
it was found, ten years later, that the foreigners were 
more than treble the number ; and a century later, 
there were estimated to be not fewer than 13,500 
refugees of French birth in London alone. 

The policy adopted by the early English kings, and 
so consistently pursued by Queen Elizabeth throughout 
her reign, of succouring and protecting industrious 
exiles flying into England for refuge, was followed by 
James I., and by the later Stuarts. An attempt was 
indeed made by Bishop Laud, in the reign of Charles 
L, in 1622, to compel the refugees, who were for the 
most part Calvinists, to conform to the English liturgy. 
• On this, the foreign congregations appealed to the 
king, pleading the hospitality extended to them by 
the nation when they had fled from papal persecution 

established in Scotland until the the only licence, endeavoured to keep 

middle of the following century, the new printer (one David Lindsay) 

Literature must then have been at a out of the trade, alleging that she 

low ebb north of the Tweed. In had been previously invested with 

1683 there was only one printing-press the sole privilege, and that "one 

in all Scotland ; and when it was pro- press is sufficiently able to supply all 

posed to license a second printer, the Scotland /" 
widow of Andrew Anderson, who held 



chap.v. LAUD AND THE PROTESTANT REFUGEES. 129 



abroad, and the privileges and exemptions granted to 
them by Edward VI., which had been confirmed by 
Elizabeth and James, and even by Charles I. himself. 
The utmost concession that the king would grant was, 
that those who were born aliens might still enjoy the 
use of their own church service ; but that all their 
children born in England should regularly attend the 
parish churches. Even this small concession was 
limited only to the congregation at Canterbury, and 
measures were taken to enforce conformity in the 
other dioceses.* 



* The policy of Laud, by which. 
Charles I. was mainly guided, was 
essentially reactionary. His object 
seemed to be to establish a great ec- 
clesiastical hierarchy in England, with 
himself as pope. On his appointment 
as Primate of England in 1633, he 
proceeded to assimilate the ritual and 
ceremonies of the church to the Roman 
model. Strict rules were enjoined with 
respect to the dress of the clergy, and 
the use of surplices and hoods, copes, 
albs, stoles, and chasubles. Careful 
attention was paid to ritual, and to 
the attitudes and postures, the cross- 
ings and genuflexions, with which it 
was to be accompanied. Candles were 
introduced on the Communion table, 
which was railed in and called the 
Altar, after the manner of Rome ; 
while the Communion became a more 
or less disguised Mass. Laud would ad- 
mit of no Low-Churchism or Dissent, 
against? both of which he hurled ex- 
communications and anathemas. Un- 
der his rule, the poor foreign Protest- 
ants felt themselves like toads under 
a harrow. When they humbly ex- 



postulated with him by petition, and 
prayed for that liberty of worship 
which they had enjoyed in past reigns, 
he told them that his course was not to 
be stopped by the letters -patent of Ed- 
ward VI., or by any arguments they 
might use ; that their churches were 
nests of schism ; that it were better 
there should be no foreigners in Eng- 
land than that they should be per- 
mitted to prejudice and endanger the 
church government of the realm ; and 
that they must conform at their peril 
by the time appointed. While Laud 
was thus rigid in matters of religion, 
he was equally uncompromising in 
matters of literature. He instituted 
a strict censorship of the press, and if 
any book was published without his 
imprimatur, the author and printer 
were liable to be flogged, fined, placed 
in the pillory, and have their ears cropt. 
The reprinting of old books was also 
prohibited ; even such works as those 
of the Protestant Bishop Jewel being 
interdicted. The tendency of all this 
was obvious. Laud was carrying the 
English Church back to Rome as fast 



K 



130 



SETTLEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES. 



CHAP. V. 



The refugees thus found themselves exposed to the 
same kind of persecution from which they had origi- 
nally fled into England ; and rather than endure it, 
several thousands of them left the country, abandoning 
their new homes, and again risking the loss of all 
rather than give up their religion. The result was 
the emigration of about a hundred and forty families 
from Norwich into Holland, where the Dutch received 
them hospitably, and gave them house-accommodation 
free, with exemption from taxes for seven years, during 
which they instructed the natives in the woollen- 
manufacture, of which they had before been ignorant. 
But the greater number of the nonconformist foreigners 
emigrated with their families to North America, and 
swelled the numbers of the little colony already formed 
in Massachusetts Bay, which eventually laid the foun- 
dation of the great New England States. 

After the lapse of a few years, the reactionary 
course on which Archbishop Laud and Charles I. had 
entered was summarily checked, as all readers of his- 
tory know. The foreign refugees were again permitted 
to worship God according to conscience, and the right 
of free asylum in England was again recognised and 
established. 



as the nation would let him. The Pope on the 10th of January folloAving. 

offered him a Cardinal's hat, and re- The injustice as well as illegality of 

peated the offer, but the time for ac- the sentence is now, we believe, gene- 

cepting it never arrived. A few weeks rally admitted ; but the Long Parlia- 

after the meeting of the Long Parlia- ment had the upper hand, and the 

ment, in 1640, Laud was impeached struggle had become one not only for 

of high treason, condemned, and sen- liberty, but for life, 
tenced to death ; and he was beheaded 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE EARLY WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES IN 
ENGLAND. 

The chief object which the foreign Protestants had in 
view in flying for refuge into England, was to worship 
God according to conscience. For that they had sacri- 
ficed all — possessions, home, and country. Accordingly, 
no sooner did they settle in any place, than they formed 
themselves into congregations for the purpose of wor- 
shipping together. While their numbers were small, 
they were content to meet in each other's houses, or in 
workshops or other roomy places ; but, as the influx 
of refugees increased with the increase of persecution 
abroad, and as many pastors of eminence came with 
them, the strangers besought the government to grant 
them conveniences for holding their worship in public. 
This was willingly conceded to them ; and as early as 
the reign of Edward VI. churches were set apart for 
their use in London, Norwich, Southampton, and Can- 
terbury. 

The first Walloon and French churches in London 
owed their origin to the young King Edward VI., and to 
the protection of the Duke of Somerset and Archbishop 
Cranmer. On the 24th of July 1550, the King issued 
royal letters patent, appointing John A ? Lasco, a learned 



132 



WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



Polish gentleman,* superintendent of the refugee Pro- 
testant churches in England ; and at the same time he 
assigned to such of the strangers as had settled in 
London the church in Austin Friars called the Temple 
of Jesus, wherein to hold their assemblies and celebrate 
their worship according to the custom of their country. 
Of this church Walter Deloen and Martin Flanders, 
Francois de la Eiviere and Kichard Francois, were ap- 
pointed the first ministers ; the two former, of the Dutch 
or Flemish part of the congregation, and the two latter, 
of the French. The King further constituted the super- 
intendent and the ministers into a body politic, and 
placed them under the safeguard of the civil and ec- 
clesiastical authorities of the kingdom. The number 
of refugees settled in London had by this time be- 
come so great, that one church was found insufficient 
for their accommodation, although the Dutch and 
French met at alternate hours during the day. In the 
course of a few months, therefore, a second place of 
worship was granted for the French-speaking part of 



* In 1544, John A' Lasco gave up 
the office of provost of the church of 
Gnezne in Posen, of which his uncle 
was archbishop, to go and found a 
Protestant church at Embden, in East 
Friesland. An order of Charles V. 
obliged him to leave that town four 
years later, when he came over to 
England, in the year 1548, and placed 
himself in communication with Cecil, 
who recommended him to the Duke 
of Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer. 
During his residence in England, A' 
Lasco was actively engaged in propa- 



gating the new views. He established 
the first French printing-house in 
London for the publication of reli- 
gious books, of which he produced 
many ; and he also published others, 
written in French by Edward YL him- 
self. During the reign of Mary, when 
Protestantism in all its forms was tem- 
porarily suppressed, A' Lasco fled for 
his life, and took refuge in Switzer- 
land, where he died. The foreign 
churches in Austin Friars and Thread- 
needle Street were reopened on the 
accession of Elizabeth. 



CHAP. VI. 



THE REFUGEE CONGREGA TIONS. 



133 



the refugees ; and the church of St. Anthony s Hos- 
pital, in Threadneedle Street, was set apart for their 
use* 

- Walloon and French congregations were also formed 
at Sandwich, Eye, Winchelsea, Southampton, and the 
other ports at which the refugees first landed ; at Yar- 
mouth, where they established their fishing-station ; and 
at Colchester, Stamford, Thetford, Glastonbury, and 
the inland towns where they carried on the cloth- 
manufacture. At Sandwich, the old church of St. 
Peter s was set apart for their special use ; but, at the 
same time, they were enjoined not to dispute openly 
concerning their religion.t At Eye, they were allowed 
the use of the parish church during one part of the 
day, until a special place of worship could be provided 
for their accommodation. At Norwich, where the 
number of the settlers was greater in proportion to the 
population than in most other towns, the choir of 
Friars Preachers Church, on the east side of St. An- 
drew's Hall, was assigned for the use of the Dutch, 
and the Bishop's Chapel, afterwards the church of St. 



* Both, these churches were subse- 
quently destroyed by fire. The church 
in Austin Friars was burnt down quite 
recently, and has since been restored. 
The church in Threadneedle Street was 
burnt down during the great fire of 
London, and was afterwards rebuilt ; 
but it has since been demolished to 
make way for the approaches to the 
new Royal Exchange, when it was re- 
moved to the new French church in 
St. Martins-le-Grand. 



f This church long continued to 
flourish. The Eey. Gerard de Gols, 
rector of St. Peter's, and minister of 
the Dutch congregation in Sandwich 
between 1713 and 1737, was highly 
esteemed in his day as an author, and 
so much respected by his fellow- towns- 
men that he was one of the persons 
selected by the corporation to support 
the canopies at the coronation of 
George II. and Queen Caroline. 



134 WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



Mary s Tombland, was appropriated for the use of the 
French and Walloons. 

Two of the most ancient and interesting of the 

o 

churches founded by the refugees are those of South- 
ampton and Canterbury, both of which survive to this 
day. Southampton was resorted to at an early period 
by the fugitives from the persecutions in Flanders and 
France. Many came from the Channel Islands, where 
they had first fled for refuge, on account of the proximity 
of these places to the French coast. This appears from 
the register of the church, a document of great interest, 
preserved amongst the records of the Kegister-General 
at Somerset House* Like the two foreign Protestant 
churches in London already named, that at South- 
ampton was established in the reign of Edward VL,t 
when an old chapel in Winkle Street, near the harbour, 
called Domus Dei, or " God's House," forming part of 
an ancient hospital founded by two merchants in the 
reign of Henry III., was set apart for the accommoda- 
tion of the refugees. The hospital and chapel had ori- 
ginally been dedicated to St. Julian, the patron of 
travellers, and was probably used in ancient times by 
pilgrims passing through Southampton to and from the 

* See Appendix, Registers of French the mayor and aldermen of South - 

Protestant Churches in England. ampton in Qneen Elizabeth's time 

(Brit. Mus. Vesp. E. ix.), asking "to 

+ The original grant of the chapel have a church assigned to them, and 
for the use of the Protestant refugees to have sacraments and sermons as 
is usually attributed to Elizabeth, who used in the time of Edward VI. " They 
merely confirmed the grant made by at the same time asked permission to 
Edward VI. Mr. Burn (Hist, of Foreign use their various crafts in the town, 
Protestant Refugees, j). 80) quotes a and " to employ their own country- 
petition addressed by the settlers to men and maidens in their trades." 



chap. vi. "GOD'S HOUSE," SOUTHAMPTON. 135 



adjoining monastic establishments of Netley and Beau- 
lieu, and the famous shrines of Winchester, Wells, and 
Salisbury. 

There are no records of this early French church 
beyond what can be gathered from their register,* which, 
however, is remarkably complete and well preserved, 
and presents many points of curious interest. The first 
entries are dated 1567, when the register began to be 
kept ; and they are continued, with occasional inter- 
missions, down to the year 1797. From the first list 
of communicants given, it appears that their number in 
1567 was fifty-eighty of whom eight were distinguished 
as " Anglois." The callings of the members were va- 
rious, medical men being comparatively numerous ; 
while others are described as weavers, bakers, cutlers, 
and brewers. The places from which the refugees had 
come are also given, those most frequently occurring 
being Valenciennes, Lisle, Dieppe, Gernese (Guernsey), 
and Jerse. It further appears from the entries, that 
satisfactory evidence was required of the character and 
religious standing of the new refugees who from time 
to time arrived from abroad, before they were admitted 
to the privileges of membership ; the words " avec 
attestation," " temoinage par ecrit," or simply " te- 
moinage," being attached to a large number of names. 
Many of the fugitives, before they succeeded in 
making their escape, appear to have been forced to 



* Kegister of the Church of St. 
Julian, or God's House, of South- 
ampton. Archives of Eegistrar-Ge- 



neral at Somerset House. See Ap- 
pendix. 



13G 



WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



attend mass ; and their first care on landing seems to 
have been, to seek out the nearest pastor, confess their 
sin, and take the sacrament according to the rites of 
their church. On the 3d of July 1574 (more than a 
year after the massacre of St. Bartholomew) occurs this 
entry — " Tiebaut de Befroi, his wife, his son, and his 
daughter, after having made their public acknowledg- 
ment of having been at the mass, were all received to 
the sacrament." 

One of the most interesting portions of the register 
is the record of fasts and thanksgivings held at God's 

o o 

House, in the course of which we see the poor refugees 
anxiously watching the course of events abroad, de- 
ploring the increasing ferocity of the persecutors, pray- 
ing God to bridle the strong and wicked men who 
sought to destroy His church, and to give the help of 
His outstretched arm to its true followers and defend- 
ers. The first of such fasts (Jeusnes) relates to the 
persecutions in the Netherlands by the Duke of Alva, 
and runs as follows :* — " The year 1568, the third day 
of September, was celebrated a public fast ; the occasion 
was that Monseignor the Prince of Orange had descended 
from Germany into the Low Countries to try with God's 
help to deliver the poor churches there from affliction ; 
and now to beseech the Lord most fervently for the 
deliverance of His people, this fast was celebrated." 

Another fast was held in 1570, on the occasion 
of the defeat of the Prince of Conde at the battle of 
Jarnac, when the little church at Southampton again. 

* For the words in the original, see Appendix. 



chap. vi. THE FASTS AT " GOD'S HOUSE: 



137 



beseech ed help for their brethren against the calami- 
ties which threatened to overwhelm them. Two years 
later, on the 25th of September 1572, we find them 
again entreating help for the Prince of Orange, who 
had entered the Low Countries from Germany with a 
new army, to deliver the poor churches there from the 
hands of the Duke of Alva, " that cruel tyrant ; and 
also, principally, for that the churches of France have 
suffered a marvellous and extremely horrible calamity — 
a horrible massacre having been perpetrated at Paris on 
the 24th day of August last, in which a great number 
of nobles and of the faithful were killed in one night, 
about twelve or thirteen thousand ; preaching forbidden 
throughout the kingdom, and all the property of the 
faithful given up to pillage throughout the kingdom. 
Now, for the consolation of them and of the Low 
Countries, and to pray the Lord for their deliverance, 
was celebrated this solemn fast."* 

Other fasts were held, to pray God to maintain 
her Majesty the Queen in good friendship and accord 
with the Prince of Orange,t to uphold the Protestant 
churches in France, to stay the ravages of the plague, 
to comfort and succour the poor people of Antwerp 
driven out of that city on its destruction by the 
Spaniards,^ and to help and strengthen the churches 
of the refuge established in England. Several of these 
fasts were appointed to be held by the conference (col- 
loque) of the churches, the meetings of which were 



* For tlie words in the original, f Fast, 29th August 1576. 
see Appendix. % Fast, 22d November 1576 



138 



WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



held annually in London, Canterbury, Norwich, South- 
ampton, and other places ; so that at the same time 
the same fast was being held in all the foreign churches 
throughout the kingdom. 

In one case the shock of an earthquake is recorded. 
The entry runs as follows :— « The 28th of April 1580, 
a fast was celebrated to pray God to preserve us against 
his anger, since on the sixth of this month we have 
been appalled by a great trembling of the earth, which 
has not only been felt throughout all this kingdom, but 
also in Picardy and the Low Countries of Flanders ; 
as well as to preserve us against war and plague, and 
to protect the poor churches of Flanders and France 
against the assaults of their enemies, who have joined 
their forces to the great army of Spain for the pur- 
pose of working their destruction." Another fast com- 
memorates the appearance of a comet, which was first 
seen on the 8th of October, and continued in sight 
until the 12th of December in the year 1581. 

A subsequent entry relates to the defeat of the 
great Spanish armada. On this occasion the little 
church united in a public thanksgiving. The record 
is as follows: — "The 29th of November 1588, thanks 
were publicly rendered to God for the wonderful dis- 
persion of the Spanish fleet, which had descended upon 
the coast of England with the obj ect of conquering the 
kingdom and bringing it under the tyranny of the 
Pope/' And, on the 5 th of December following, an- 
other public fast was held for the purpose of praying 
the Lord that he would be pleased to grant to the 



CHAP. VI. 



QUEEN ELIZABETH A T SOUTHAMPTON. 



139 



churches of France and of Flanders a like happy de- 
liverance as had been vouchsafed to England. A 
blessing was also sought upon the English navy, which 
had put to flight the armada of Spain. 

Other fasts and thanksgivings relate to the progress 
of the arms of Henry of Navarre, and his subsequent 
ascent of the French throne, when the right of the 
French Protestants to liberty of worship became legally 
recognised." 5 " In the midst of these events, Queen 
Elizabeth visited Southampton with her court; on 
which occasion the refugees sought to obtain access to 
her Majesty, to thank her for the favour and protec- 
tion they had enjoyed at her hands. They were un- 
able to obtain an interview with the Queen until she 
had set out on her way homeward, when a deputation 
of the refugees waited for her outside the town and 
craved a brief interview. This she graciously accorded, 
when their spokesman thanked her for the tranquillity 
and rest which they had enjoyed during the twenty- 
four years that they had lived in the town ; to which 
the Queen replied very kindly, giving praise to God 
who had given her the opportunity and the power 
of welcoming and encouraging the poor foreigners.! 

A considerable proportion of the fasts relate to the 



* On the 7 tli September 1589, the neither forgotten their native country, 

French Protestant refugees in London nor the cause of their coming hither, 

sent an address to Henry IV., on his — State Paper Office ; Foreign Corre- 

accession to the French throne, ex- spondence — France, 
horting him to continue steadfast in 

his support of the church ; showing f Entry in Register of God's House, 

that the poor French emigrants had Southampton. See Appendix. 



140 WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



plague, which was a frequent and unwelcome visitor 
— on one occasion sweeping away almost the entire 
settlement. In 1583, the communicants were reduced 
to a very small number ; but those who remained met 
daily at " God's House " to pray for the abatement of 
the pestilence. It returned again in 1604, and again 
swept away a large proportion of the congregation, 
which had considerably increased in the interval. 
One hundred and sixty-one persons are set down as 
having died of plague in that year, the number of 
deaths amounting to four and five a-day. The greater 
part of the inhabitants of Southampton abandoned 
their dwellings, and the clergy seem to have accom- 
panied them ; for on the 23d of July 1665 an English 
child was brought to the French church to be baptized, 
by authority of the mayor, and the ceremony was 
performed by M. Courand, the pastor. Shortly after, 
Courand died at his post, after registering with his 
own hand the deaths of the greater part of his flock. 
On the 21st September 1665, the familiar handwriting 
of the pastor ceases, and the entry is made by another 
hand : " Monsieur Courand, notre pasteur — peste." 
While death was thus busy, marrying and giving in 
marriage nevertheless went on. Some couples were 
so impatient to be united that they could not wait for 
the return of the English clergy, who had all left the 
town, but proceeded to be married at " God's House," 
as we find by the register. 

Another highly-interesting memorial of the asylum 
given to the persecuted Protestants of Flanders and 



CHAP. VI. 



CANTERBURY WALLOON CHURCH. 



141 



France so many centuries ago, is presented by the 
Walloon or French church which exists to this day in 
Canterbury Cathedral. It was formed at a very early 
period, some suppose as early as the reign of Edward 
VI., like those of London and Southampton ; but the 
first record preserved of its existence is early in the 
reign of Elizabeth. Shortly after the landings of the 
foreign Protestants at Sandwich and Eye, a body of 
them proceeded to Canterbury, and sought permission 
of the mayor and aldermen to settle in the place. 
They came principally from Lisle, Nuelle, Turcoing, 
Waterloo, Darmentieres, and other places situated 
along the present French frontier. 

The first arrivals of the fugitives consisted of 
eighteen families, led by their pastor, Hector Hamon, 
"minister verbi Dei." They are described as having 
landed at Eye, and temporarily settled at Winchelsea, 
from which place they came across the country to 
Canterbury. Persecution had made these poor exiles 
very humble. All that they sought was freedom to 
worship and to labour. They had no thought but to 
pursue their several callings in peace and quiet — -to 
bring up their children virtuously — and to lead a 
diligent, sober, and religious life, according to the dic- 
tates of conscience. Men such as these are the salt of 
the earth in all times ; yet they had been forced by a 
ruthless persecution from their homes, and driven forth 
as wanderers on the face of the earth. 

In their memorial to the mayor and aldermen, in 
1564, they set forth that they had, for the love of 



142 



WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



religion (which they earnestly desired to hold fast 
with a free conscience), relinquished their country and 
their worldly goods ; and they humbly prayed that 
they might be permitted the free exercise of their re- 
ligion within the city, and allowed the privilege of a 
temple to hold their worship in, together with a place 
of sepulture for their dead. They further requested 
that lest, under the guise of religion, profane and evil- 
minded men should seek to share in the privileges 
which they sought to obtain, none should be permitted 
to join them without giving satisfactory evidences of 
their probity of character. And, in order that the 
young persons belonging to their body might not re- 
main untaught, they also asked permission to main- 
tain a teacher for the purpose of instructing them in 
the French tongue. Finally, they declared their in- 
tention of being industrious citizens, and proceeding, 
under the favour and protection of the magistrates, to 
make Florence, serges, bombazine, Orleans, silk, bayes, 
mouquade, and other stuffs.* 



* The following is the memorial, 
as given in the appendix to Somner's 
Antiquities of Canterbury, and which 
he entitles " The articles granted to 
the French strangers by the Mayor 
and Aldermen of the Citty :" — 

DignissimisDominis Domino Maiori 
et Fratribus Consiliariis Urbis 
Cantuariensis Salutem. 
Supplicant humilime extranei vestra 
libertate adm si in ista urbe Cantua- 
riensi quat' velitis sequentes articulos 
illis concedere. 



Prior Articulus. 

1. Quia religionis am ore (quam li- 
bera conscientia tenere percupiunt) 
patriani et propria bona reliquerunt, 
orant sibi liberum exercitium suae re- 
ligionis permitti in hac urbe, quod ut 
fiat commodius sibi assignari templum 
et locum in quo poterint sepelire mor- 
tuos suos. 

Secundus Articulus. 

2. Et ne sub eorum umbra et titulo 
religionis profani et male morati ho- 
mines sese in banc urbem intromittaiit 



chap. vr. THE EXILES IN THE UNDER CROFT. 143 



Canterbury was fortunate in being appealed to by 
the fuoitives for an asylum — bringing; with, them, as 
they did, skill, industry, and character ; and the autho- 
rities at once cheerfully granted them all that they 
asked, in the terms of their own memorial. The 
mayor and aldermen gave them permission to carry 
on their trades within the precincts of the city. At 
the same time, the liberal-minded Matthew Parker, 
then Archbishop of Canterbury, with the sanction of 
the Queen,, granted to the exiles the free use of the 
Under Croft of the cathedral, where "the gentle and 
profitable strangers," as the Archbishop styled them, 
not only celebrated their worship and taught their 



per quos tota societas . male aucliret 
apud cives yestros ; supplicant nemini 
liberam mansionem in hac urbe per- 
mitti, nisi prius sua? probitatis suffi- 
ciens testimonium vobis dedeiit. 

Tertius Articulus. 
3. Etne inventus inculta maneat,re- 
quimnt permissionem dari praeceptori 
quern secum adduxerunt instruendi 
juvenes, turn eos quos secum adduxe- 



runt, turn eos qui volunt linguam 
Gallicum disc ere. 

Quartus Articulus. 
4. Artes ad quas exercendas sunt 
vocari, et in quibus laborare cupit tota 
societas sub vestro favore et protec- 
tion sunt Florenci, Serges, Bom- 
basin, D. of Ascot Serges, etc., of 
Orleance, Frotz, Silkwever, Mouquade, 
Mauntes, Bazes, &c, Stofe Mou- 
quades. 



Nomina supplicantium sunt 
Hector Hamox, Minister verbi Dei. 
Yixcextius Primont, Institutor Juventutis. 
Egidius Cousin, Magister operum, et conductor totius congre- 
tionis in opere. 

Michael Cousin. Johannes le Pelu. 

Jacobus Querin. Johannes de la Forterye. 

Petrus du Bose. Noel Lestene. 

Axtoxius du Verdier. Nicholaus Dubuisson. 
Phtlippus de Xeuz. Petrus Desportes. 
piobeetus jovelin. jacobus boudet. 
Tres Yidu^. 



144 WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



children, but set up their looms and carried on their 
several trades. 

The Under Croft, or Crypt, extends under the choir 
and high altar of Canterbury Cathedral, and is of con- 
siderable extent. The body of Thomas a Beckett was 
buried first in the Under Croft, and lay there for fifty 
years, until it was translated with great ceremony to 
the sumptuous shrine prepared by Stephen Langton, 
his successor, at the east end of the cathedral. Part 
of the Under Croft, immediately under the cross aisle 
of the choir, was dedicated and endowed as a chapel 
by Edward the Black Prince ; and another part of the 
area was enclosed by rich Gothic stone-work, and 
dedicated to the Virgin.* 

The Lady Undercroft Chapel was one of the most 
gorgeous shrines of its time. It was so rich and of 



* Canterbury Cathedral contains 
an interesting Huguenot memorial 
of about the same date as the settle- 
ment of the Walloons in the Under 
Croft. The visitor to the cathedral 
observes behind the high altar, near 
the tomb of the Black Prince, a coffin 
of brick plastered over in the form of 
a sarcophagus. It contains the ashes 
of Cardinal Odo Coligny, brother of 
the celebrated Admiral Coligny, one 
of the first victims of the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew. In 1568 the car- 
dinal visited Queen Elizabeth, who 
received him with marked respect, and 
lodged him sumptuously at Sheen. 
Three years later he died at Canter- 
bury after a brief illness. Strype, 
and nearly all subsequent writers, 
allege that he died of poison, adminis- 



tered by one of his attendants because 
of his supposed conversion to Protest- 
antism. From a full report of his 
death made to Burghley and Leicester, 
preserved in the State Paper Office, 
there does not, however, appear suffi- 
cient ground for the popular belief. 
His body was not interred, but was 
placed in the brick coffin behind the 
high altar, in order that it might be 
the more readily removed for inter- 
ment in the family vault in France, 
when the religious troubles which 
then prevailed had come to an end. 
But the massacre of St. Bartholomew 
shortly followed ; the Coligny family 
were thereby almost destroyed ; and 
hence the body of Odo Coligny has 
not been buried to this day. 



chap. vi. THE CHAPEL OF THE UNDER CROFT. 145 



such high esteem, that Somner says "the sight of it 
was debarred to the vulgar, and reserved only for per- 
sons of great quality/' Erasmus, who by especial favour 
(Archbishop Warham recommending him) was brought 
to the sight of it, describes it thus : " There," said he, 
" the Virgin-mother hath a habitation, but somewhat 
dark, inclosed with a double Sept or Kail of Iron for 
fear of Thieves. For indeed I never saw a thing more 
laden with Kiches. Lights being, brought, we saw a 
more than Koyal Spectacle. In beauty it far surpasseth 
that of Walsingham. This Chapel is not showed but 
to Noblemen and especial Friends."* Over the statue 
of the Virgin, which was in pure gold, there was a 
royal- purple canopy, starred with jewels and precious 
stones ; and a row of silver lamps was suspended from 
the roof in front of the shrine. 

All these decorations were, however, removed by 
Henry VIII., who took possession of the greater part 
of the gold and silver and jewels of the cathedral, and 
had them converted into money.f The Under Croft 
became deserted; the chapels it contained were dis- 
used ; and it remained merely a large, vaulted, ill- 



* SOMNEE — Antiquities of Canter- 
bury, 1703, p. 97. 

t One of the richest parts of the 
treasure taken from the Cathedral was 
the Shrine of Thomas a Beckett, thus 
described by Stow in his Annals (in 
Henry VIII.) :— " The timber-work 
of this Shrine on the outside was 
covered with plates of Gold, damasked 



and embossed with Wires of Gold, 
garnished with Brooches, Images, 
Angels, Chains, Precious Stones, and 
great Orient Pearls, the Spoil of which 
Shrine (in Gold and Jewels of an in- 
estimable value) filled two great Chests, 
one of which six or eight strong men 
could do no more than convey out of 
the Church — all which was taken to 
the King's use. ! ' 



146 



WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES. chap. vi. 



lighted area, until permission was granted to the 
Walloons to use it by turns as a weaving-shed, a 
school, and a church. Over the capitals of the columns 
on the north side of the crypt are several texts of 
Scripture still to be seen in old French, written up for 
the benefit of the scholars, and doubtless taught them 
by heart. The texts are from the Psalms, the Proverbs, 
and the New Testament. 

Desolate, gloomy, and sepulchral though the place 
was — with the ashes of former archbishops and digni- 
taries of the cathedral mouldering under their feet — 
the exiles were thankful for the refuge it afforded 
them in their time of need, and they daily made the 
vaults resound with their prayer and praise. Morning 
and night they "sang the Lord's song in a strange 
land, and wept when they remembered Zion." During 
the day-time the place was busy with the sound of 
labour; the floor was covered with looms, through 
which the shuttles went flashing ; and the exiles were 
cheered at the thought of being able thus honestly 
to earn their living, though amongst foreigners. 

The refugees worked, worshipped, and prospered. 
They succeeded in maintaining themselves ; they sup- 
ported their own poor; and they were able, out of 
their small means, to extend a helping hand to the 
numerous fugitives who continued to arrive in England, 
fleeing from the persecutions in Flanders and France. 
Their numbers so increased, that in the course of a 
few years the French congregation consisted of several 
hundred persons. Every corner of the Under Croft w T as 



chap. vi. THE EXILES IN THE UNDER CROFT 147 



occupied, and, as more immigrants continued to arrive, 
the place became too small to accommodate them. 
Somner, writing in 1639, thus refers to the exiles : — 

" Let me now lead you to the Under Croft — a place fit, and 
haply (as one cause) fitted to keep in memory the subterraneous 
Temples of the Primitives, in the times of Persecution. The 
West part whereof, being spacious and lightsome, for many years 
hath been the strangers' church : A congregation for the most 
part of distressed Exiles, grown so great, and yet daily multiply- 
ing, that the place in short time is likely to prove a Hive too 
little to contain such a Swarm. So great an alteration is there 
since the time the first of the Tribe came hither, the number of 
them then consisting of but eighteen families, or thereabouts."* 

The exiles remained unmolested in the exercise of 
their worship until the period when Laud became 
archbishop, when the attempt was made to compel 
them to conform to the English ritual, and they began 
to fear lest they should again have to fly and seek 
refuge elsewhere. But the attention of the archbishop 
was shortly diverted from them by the outbreak of the 
Scottish war ; and although there were riots and dis- 
turbances in the cathedral t — the popular indignation 
being greatly excited by the retrograde movement then 
on foot in religious and political affairs — it does not 



* Somner — Antiquities of Canter- 
bury, Part i. 97. 

f In the preface to the new edition 
of Somner's Antiquities of Canterbury, 
the editor, Nicolas Battely, M.A., 
thus refers to these riots: — "Mr. 
William Somner collected the Anti- 
quities of Canterbury in a time of 
Peace, while (as yet) the Church flour- 
ished under the Government of King 



Charles I., and under the conduct of 
Archbishop Laud, to whose Patronage 
he dedicated this Work, which he 
published Anno 1640. But before 
this Vear was ended, a dismal Storm 
did arise, which did shake and threaten 
with a final overthrow the very Foun- 
dations of this Church : For upon the 
Feast of the Epiphany, and the Sun- 
day following, there was a riotous 



148 WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



appear that the foreigners were further molested. 
They were protected throughout the period of the 
Commonwealth and the Protectorate ; and afterwards 
by Charles II. Their numbers were greatly increased 
by the arrival of a body of silk and stuff weavers 
from Tours; until, in 1665, they numbered 126 mas- 
ter-weavers and above 1300 workpeople, who carried 
on the trades of silk and stuff weaving, dyeing, loom 
and wheel making, and various other branches of 
skilled industry. At the same time, they gave em- 
ployment to a large number of the townspeople, who 
gradually learnt the various branches of trade pursued 
by the foreigners. In 1676, the king granted the 
weavers a charter, under which they formed them- 
selves into a company, entitled " The Masters, Wardens, 
Assistants, and Fellowship of Weavers;" and in the 
course of a few more years they had a thousand looms 
at work. 

The exiles continued to prosper and the trade of 
Canterbury to thrive, until after the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, which was followed by another im- 
mense influx of refugee Protestants from France into 
various parts of England. A large number of them 

disturbance raised by some disorderly Stalls, the beautiful and new-erected 

People, in the time of Divine Service, Font was pulled down, the Inscrip- 

in the Quire of this Church : And tions, Figures, and Coats of Arms, 

altho' by the care of the Prebendaries engraven upon Brass, were torn off 

a stop was put to these Disorders for from the ancient Monuments ; and 

a time, yet afterwards the Madness of whatsoever there was of beauty or de- 

the People did rage, and prevail be- cency in the Holy Place, was despoiled 

yond resistance. The venerable Dean by the outrages of Sacrilege and Pro- 

and Canons were turned out of their faneness." 



CHAP. VI. 



FRENCH CHURCH, CANTERBURY. 



149 



settled ill Spitalfields, and there established various 
branches of the silk-manufacture ; and the advantages 
of concentrating the trade shortly after induced the 
greater part of the Canterbury settlers to remove to 
London. The consequence was, that the French church 
at Canterbury gradually declined ; and though many of 
the French exiles and their descendants remained in the 
city, and are traceable to this day, they have long ceased 
to form a distinctive part of the population. 

But it is a remarkable circumstance that the 
original French Calvinist church still continues to exist 
in Canterbury Cathedral. Three hundred years have 
passed since the first body of exiled Walloons met to 
worship there — three hundred years, during which 
generations have come and gone, and revolutions have 
swept over Europe ; and still that eloquent memorial 
of the religious history of the middle ages survives, 
bearing testimony alike to the rancour of the persecu- 
tions abroad, the heroic steadfastness of the foreign 
Protestants, the large and liberal spirit of the English 
church, and the glorious asylum which England has 
in all times given to foreigners flying for refuge 
against oppression and tyranny. 

The visitor to the cathedral, in passing through 
the Under Croft, has usually pointed out to him the 
apartment still used as "the French Church." It is 
walled off from the crypt in the south side-aisle • and 
through the windows which overlook the interior the 
arrangements of the place can easily be observed. It 
is plainly fitted up with pews, a pulpit, and precentor's 



150 



WALLOON AND FRENCH CHURCHES, chap. vi. 



desk, like a dissenting place of worship ; and indeed it 
is a dissenting place of worship, though forming part 
of the High Cathedral of Canterbury. The place also 
contains a long table, at which the communicants sit 
when receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
after the manner of the Geneva brethren. 

And here the worship still continues to be con- 
ducted in French, and the psalms are sung to the old 
Huguenot tunes, almost within sound of the high 
choral service of the Established Church of England 
overhead. " Here," says the German Dr. Pauli, " the 
early refugees celebrated the services of their church ; 
and here their descendants, who are now reduced to a 
very small number, still carry on their Presbyterian 
mode of worship in their own tongue, immediately 
below the south aisle of the high choir, where the 
Anglican ritual is observed in all its prescribed form 
— a noble and touching concurrence, the parallel to 
which cannot be met with in any other cathedral 
church in England." * 

The French church at Canterbury would doubtless 
long since have become altogether extinct, like the 
other churches of the refugees, but for an endowment 
of about £200 a-year, which has served to keep it alive. 
The members do not now amount to more than twenty, 
of whom two are elders and four deacons. But though 
the church has become reduced to a mere vestige and 
remnant of what it was, it nevertheless serves to mark 
an epoch of memorable importance to England. 

* Pauli — Pictures of Old England, 29. 



CHAPTER VII. 



RENEWAL OF THE PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE — REVO- 
CATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES. 

The Huguenots did not long enjoy the privileges con- 
ceded to them by the Edict of Nantes. Twelve years 
after its promulgation by Henry IV., that monarch 
was assassinated by Ravaillac, on which the elements 
of discord again broke loose. Although the edicts of 
toleration were formally proclaimed by his successor, 
they were practically disregarded and violated. Marie 
de Medicis, the queen-regent, was, like all her race, 
the bitter enemy of Protestantism. She was governed 
by Italian favourites, who inspired her policy. They 
distributed amongst themselves the public treasure 
with so lavish a hand that the Parisians rose in insur- 
rection against them, murdered Concini, whom the 
queen had created Marshal d' An ere, and afterwards 
burned his wife as a sorceress ; the young king, Louis 
XIIL, then only about sixteen years old, joining in 
the atrocities. 

Civil war shortly broke out between the court and 
the country factions, which soon became embittered by 
the old religious animosities. There was a great mas- 
sacre of the Huguenots in Bearn, where their worship 
was suppressed, and the Roman Catholic priests were 



152 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



installed in their places. Other massacres followed, 
and occasioned general alarm amongst the Protestants. 
In those towns where they were the strongest, they 
shut their gates against the king s forces, and deter- 
mined to resist force by force. In 1621, the young 
king set out with his army to reduce the revolted 
towns, and first attacked St. Jean d'Angely, which he 
captured after a siege of twenty-six days. He next 
assailed Montauban, but, after a siege of two months, 
he was compelled to retire from, the place defeated, 
with tears in his eyes. 

In 1622, the kiDg called to his councils Armancl 
Duplessis de Eichelieu, the queen s favourite adviser, 
whom the Pope had recently presented with a car- 
dinal's hat. His force of character was soon felt, and 
in all affairs of government the influence of Eichelieu 
became supreme. One of the first objects to which he 
applied himself was the suppression of the anarchy 
which prevailed throughout France, occasioned in a 
great measure by the abuse of the feudal powers still 
exercised by the ancient noblesse. Another object 
which he considered essential to the unity and power 
of France, was the annihilation of the Protestants as a 
political party. Accordingly, shortly after his acces- 
sion to office, he advised the attack of Eochelle, the 
head-quarters of the Huguenots, and regarded as the 
citadel of Protestantism in France. His advice was fol- 
lowed, and a powerful army was assembled and marched 
on the doomed place, Eichelieu combining in himself 
the functions of bishop, prime-minister, and commander- 



CHAP. VII. 



SIEGE OF ROCHELLE. 



153 



in-chief. The Huguenots of Eochelle defended them- 
selves with great bravery for more than a year, during 
which they endured the greatest privations. But their 
resistance was in vain ; for on the 28th of October 
1628, Eichelieu rode into Eochelle by the king's side, 
in velvet and cuirass, at the head of the royal army ; 
after which he proceeded to perform high mass in 
the great church of St. Margaret in celebration of 
his victory. 

The siege of Eochelle, while in progress, excited 
much interest among the Protestants throughout Eng- 
land ; and anxious appeals were made to Charles I. to 
send help to the besieged. This he faithfully promised 
to do ; and he despatched a fleet and army to their 
assistance, commanded by his favourite the Duke of 
Buckingham. The fleet duly arrived off Eochelle ; and 
the army landed on the Isle of Ehe, but were driven 
back to their ships with great slaughter. Buckingham 
attempted nothing further on behalf of the Eochellese. 
He returned to England with a disgraced flag and 
a murmuring fleet, amidst the general discontent of 
the people. A second expedition sailed for the relief 
of the place, under the command of the Earl of Lind- 
say ; but though the fleet arrived in sight of Eochelle, 
it sailed back to England without even making an 
attempt on its behalf. The popular indignation rose 
to a still greater height than before. It was bruited 
abroad, and generally believed, that both expeditions 
had been a mere blind on the part of Charles L, and 
that, acting under the influence of his queen, Henrietta 



154 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



Maria, sister of the French king, he had never really 
intended that Kochelle should be relieved. However 
this might be, the failure was disgraceful ; and when, 
in later years, the unfortunate Charles was brought to 
trial by his subjects, the abortive Kochelle expeditions 
were bitterly remembered against him. 

Meanwhile Cardinal Eichelieu vigorously prose- 
cuted the war against the Huguenots wherever they 
stood in arms against the king. His operations were 
uniformly successful. The Huguenots were everywhere 
overthrown, and in the course of a few years they had 
ceased to exist as an armed power in France. Acting 
in a wise and tolerant spirit, Eichelieu refrained from 
pushing his advantage to an extremity ; and when all 
resistance was over, he advised the king to issue an 
edict granting freedom of worship and other privileges. 
The astute statesman was doubtless induced to adopt 
this course by considerations of state policy, for he had 
by this time entered into a league with the Swedish 
and German Protestant powers for the humiliation of 
the house of Austria ; and with that object he sought 
to enlist the co-operation of the king's Protestant as 
well as Eoman Catholic subjects. The result was, that, 
in 1629, "the Edict of Pardon" was issued by Louis 
XIII., granting to the Protestants various rights and 
privileges, together with liberty of worship and equality 
before the law. 

From this time forward the Huguenots ceased to 
exist as a political party, and were distinguished from 
the rest of the people by their religion only. * Being 



chap. vii. LOYALTY OF THE HUGUENOTS. 155 



no longer available for purposes of faction, many of the 
nobles, who had been their leaders, fell away from them 
and rejoined the old church ; though a large number of 
the smaller gentry, the merchants, manufacturers, and 
skilled workmen, continued Protestants as before. Their 
loyal conduct fully justified the indulgences which were 
granted to them by Eichelieu, and confirmed by his 
successor Mazarin. Eepeated attempts were made to 
involve them in the civil broils of the time, but they 
sternly kept aloof, and if they took up arms it was 
on the side of the government. When, in 1632, the 
Duke of Montmorency sought, for factious purposes, to 
re-awaken the religious passions in Languedoc, of which 
he was governor, the Huguenots refused to join him. 
The Protestant inhabitants of Montauban even offered 
to march against him. During the wars of the Fronde, 
they sided with the king against the factions. Even 
the inhabitants of Eochelle supported the regent 
against their own governor. Cardinal Mazarin, then 
prime minister, frankly acknowledged the loyalty of 
the Huguenots. " I have no cause," he said, " to com- 
plain of the little flock; if they browse on bad herbage, 
at least they do not stray away." Louis XIV. himself, 
at the commencement of his reign, formally thanked 
them for the consistent manner in which they had 
withstood the invitations of powerful chiefs to resist 
the royal authority ; while, at the same time, he pro- 
fessed to confirm them in the enjoyment of their rights 
and privileges. 

The Protestants, however, continued to labour 



156 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



under many disabilities. They were in a great mea- 
sure excluded from civil office and from political em- 
ployment. They accordingly devoted themselves for 
the most part to industrial pursuits. They were ac- 
knowledged to be the best agriculturists, wine-growers, 
merchants, and manufacturers in France. "At all 
events," said Ambrose Pare, one of the most industrious 
men of his time, " posterity will not be able to charge 
us with idleness." No heavier crops were grown in 
France than on the Huguenot farms in Bearn and the 
south-western provinces. In Languedoc, the cantons 
inhabited by the Protestants were the best cultivated 
and most productive. The slopes of the Aigoul and 
the Eperon were covered with their flocks and herds. 
The valley of Vaunage, in the diocese of Msmes, 
where they had more than sixty temples, was cele- 
brated for the richness of its vegetation, and was called 
by its inhabitants "the Little Canaan." The vine- 
dressers of Berri and the Pays Messin, on the Moselle, 
restored those districts to more than their former pros- 
perity ; and the diligence, skill, and labour with which 
they subdued the stubborn soil and made it yield its 
increase of flowers and fruits, and corn and wine, bore 
witness in all quarters to the toil and energy of the 
men of The Beligion. 

The Huguenots of the towns were similarly indus- 
trious and enterprising. At Tours and Lyons they 
prosecuted the silk-manufacture with great success, 
making taffetas, velvets, brocades, ribbons, and cloth 
of gold and silver, of finer qualities than were then 



chap. vir. THE HUGUENOT INDUSTRIES. 



157 



produced in any other country in Europe. They also 
carried on the manufacture of fine cloth in various 
parts of France, and exported the article in large 
quantities to Germany, Spain, and ^England. * They 
established magnificent linen-manufactories at Vire, 
Falaise, and Argentine, in Normandy ; manufactories 
of bleached cloth at Morlaix, Landerman, and Brest ; 
and manufactories of sail- cloth at Eennes, Nantes, and 
Vitre, in Brittany ; great part of whose produce was 
exported to Holland and England, f 

The Huguenots also carried on large manufactories 



* The wool used in the manufacture 
of the French cloth was, for the most 
part, brought from England, notwith- 
standing the heavy duties then levied 
on its export. When prices became 
excessive, the export was wholly pro- 
hibited. But this did not prevent 
the smuggling of wool outwards on a 
large scale. It was carried on all 
round the coast, but principally by 
the owlers (as the smugglers of wool 
were called) of Eomney Marsh. Men 
were always to be found ready to risk 
their necks for a shilling a-day. The 
writer of a pamphlet, published in 
1671, entitled, England's Interest by 
Trade Asserted, showing the Necessity 
and Excellency thereof, says : — "The 
methods or ways of these evils are 
— first, in Rumny-Marsh in Kent, 
where the greatest part of rough wool 
is exported from England, put aboard 
French shallops by night, ten or 
twenty men, well armed, to guard it ; 
some other parts there are, as in Sus- 
sex, Hampshire, and Essex, where the 
same methods may be used, but not 
so conveniently. The same for combed 



wool from Canterbury ; they will carry 
it ten or fifteen miles at night towards 
the sea, with the like guard as before" 
(p. 16). In two years forty thou- 
sand packs were sent to Calais alone. 
The Romney Marsh men not only 
shipped their own wool, but large 
quantities brought from the inland 
counties. In 1677, Andrew Marvel 
described the wool-men as a militia 
that, in defiance of authority, con- 
veyed their wool to the shallops in 
such strength that the officers of the 
Crown dared not offend them. The 
coast-men, at shearing-time, openly 
carried their wool on horses' backs to 
the sea-shore, where French vessels 
were ready to receive it, attacking 
fiercely any one who ventured to in- 
terfere. 

f " Such was the extent of this 
manufacture," says Weiss {History of 
the French Protestant Refugees), ' ' that 
the English every year bought at Mor- 
laix 4,500,000 livres' worth of these 
cloths — a fact verified by the register 
of the duties they paid for the stamp 



158 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



of paper in Auvergne and the Angoumois. In the 
latter province they had no fewer than six hundred 
paper-mills, and the article they produced was the best 
of its kind in Europe. The mills at Ambert supplied 
the paper on which the choicest books which emanated 
from the presses of Paris, as well as Amsterdam and 
London, were then printed. The celebrated leather of 
Touraine, and the fine hats of Caudebec, were almost 
exclusively produced by the Protestant manufacturers, 
who also successfully carried on, at Sedan, the fabri- 
cation of articles of iron and steel, which were exported 
abroad in large quantities. 

Perhaps one reason why the Huguenots were so 
successful in conducting these great branches of in- 
dustry, consisted in the fact that their time was much 
less broken in upon by saints' days and festival-days, 
and that their labour was thus much more continuous, 
and consequently more effective, than in the case of 
the Roman Catholic portion of the population.* Be- 
sides this, however, the Protestants were almost of 
necessity men of stronger character ; for they had to 

on their exit from the kingdom. " In- felt hats ; and 400, 000 reams of paper ; 
deed, the English were at that time besides numerous other articles. " 
among the largest purchasers of French * ' ' The working year of the Protest- 
manufactures of all kinds. The writer ants consisted of 310 days, because 
of a pamphlet, entitled An Inquiry they dedicated to repose only the fifty - 
into the Revenue, Credit, and Commerce two Sundays and a few solemn fes- 
of France, in a Letter to a Member of tivals, which gave to their industry 
Parliament (London, 1742), says : the superiority of one-sixth over that 
"We formerly took from France to of the Catholics, whose working year 
the value of £600,000 per annum in was 260 days, because they devoted 
silks, velvets, and satins ; £700,000 more than 105 to repose." — Weiss, 
in linen, canvas, and sail - cloth ; History of the French Protestant Re- 
£220,000 in beaver, demicastor, and fugees, 27. 



CHAP. VII. 



THE HUGUENOT MERCHANTS. 



159 



swim against the stream, and hold by their convictions 
in the face of obloquy, opposition, and very often of 
active persecution. The sufferings they had endured 
for religion in the past, and perhaps the presentiment 
of heavier trials in the future, made them habitually 
grave and solemn in their demeanour. Their morals 
were severe as their piety was rigid. Their enemies 
called them sour and fanatical, but no one called in 
question their honesty and their integrity.* " If the 
Msmes merchants," once wTote Baville, Intendant of 
that province and one of the bitterest persecutors of 
the Protestants, " are bad Catholics, at any rate they 
have not ceased to be very good traders." The Hugue- 
not's word was as good as his bond, and to be " honest 



* It is worthy of note, that while 
the Huguenots were stigmatised, in 
contemporary Roman Catholic writ- 
ings, as " heretics," " atheists," 
"blasphemers," "monsters vomited 
forth of hell," and the like, not a 
word is to be found in them as to 
their morality and integrity of cha- 
racter. The silence of their enemies 
on this head is perhaps the most elo- 
quent testimony in their favour. 

What the Puritan was in England, 
and the Covenanter in Scotland, that 
the Huguenot was in France ; and 
that the system of Calvin should have 
developed precisely the same kind of 
men in these three several countries, 
affords a remarkable illustration of the 
power of religious training in the for- 
mation of character. 

The French Protestants' Confession 
of Faith, framed in 1559, was based 
on that of Geneva. Two sacraments 
only were recognised — Baptism and 



the Lord's Supper. Christ crucified 
was the centre of their faith, their 
cardinal doctrines being justification by 
faith and Christ the only mediator 
with the Father. 

The Huguenot form of worship was 
simple, consisting in prayer and praise, 
followed by exhortation. The sermon 
was a principal feature in the French 
Protestant service, and their ministers 
were chosen principally because of 
their ability as preachers. 

Their church government resembled 
that of the Scotch church, being based 
on popular election. Each congrega- 
tion was governed by its consistoire 
or kirk - session ; the congregations 
elected deputies, lay and clerical, to 
represent them in the provincial synod, 
and colloque or provincial assembly ; 
and finally, the whole congregations 
of France were represented in like 
manner by delegates in the Synode 
Nationale or General Assembly. 



160 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



as a Huguenot" passed into a proverb. This quality of 
integrity — which, is essential in the merchant who deals 
with foreigners whom he never sees — so characterised 
the business transactions of the Huguenots, that the 
foreign trade of the country fell almost entirely into 
their hands. The English and Dutch were always 
found more ready to open a correspondence with them, 
than with the Eoman Catholic merchants ; though 
religious affinity may possibly have had some influence 
in determining the preference. And thus at Bordeaux, 
at Kouen, at Caen, at Metz, at Nismes, and the other 
great centres of commerce, the foreign business of 
France came to be almost entirely conducted by the 
Huguenot merchants. 

The enlightened minister Colbert gave every en- 
couragement to these valuable subjects. Entertaining 
the conviction that the strength of states consisted in 
the number, the intelligence, and the industry of their 
citizens, he laboured in all ways to give effect to this 
idea. He encouraged the French to extend their 
manufactures, and at the same time held out induce- 
ments to skilled foreign artizans to settle in the king- 
dom and establish new branches of industry. The 
invitation was accepted, and considerable numbers of 
Dutch and Walloon Protestants came across the fron- 
tier and settled as cloth-manufacturers in the northern 
provinces. Colbert was the friend, so far as he dared 
to be, of the Huguenots, whose industry he encouraged, 
as the most effective means of enriching France, and 
enabling the nation to recover from the injuries in- 



CHAP. VII. 



POLICY OF COLBERT. 



1G1 



flicted upon it by the devastations and persecutions of 
the preceding century. With that object, he granted 
privileges, patents, monopolies, bounties, and honours, 
after the old-fashioned method of protecting industry. 
Some of these expedients were more harassing than 
prudent. One merchant, when consulted by Colbert 
as to the best means of encouraging commerce, an- 
swered curtly — " Laissez faire et laissez passer : 5; " Let 
us alone and let our goods pass," — a piece of advice 
which was not then either appreciated or followed. 

Colbert also applied himself to the improvement of 
the internal communications of the country. With 
his active assistance and co-operation, Eiquet de Bon- 
repos was enabled to construct the magnificent canal 
of Languedoc, which connected the Bay of Biscay 
with the Mediterranean.* He restored the old roads 
of the country and constructed new ones. He estab- 
lished free ports, sent consuls to the Levant, and 
secured a large trade with the Mediterranean. He 
bought Dunkirk and Marclyke from Charles II. of Eng- 
land, to the disgust of the English people. He founded 
dockyards at Brest, Toulon, and Eochefort. He created 
the French navy ; and, instead of possessing only a few 
old ships lying rotting in harbours, in the course of 
thirty years France came to possess 190 vessels, of 
which 120 were ships of the line. 

Colbert withal was an honest man. His prede- 
cessor Mazarin had amassed a gigantic fortune, whilst 



* For an account of this great work, and Colbert's part in it, see Brindley 
and the Early Engineers, p. 301. 

M 



162 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



Colbert died possessed of a modest fortune, the fruits 
of long labour and rigid economy. His administra- 
tion of the finances was admirable. When he assumed 
office, the state was overburdened by debt and all but 
bankrupt. The public books were in an inextricable 
state of confusion. His first object was to get rid of 
the debt by an arbitrary composition, which was tanta- 
mount to an act of bankruptcy. He simplified the 
public accounts, economised the collection of the taxes, 
cut off unnecessary expenditure, and reduced the direct 
taxation, placing his chief dependence upon indirect 
taxes on articles of consumption. After thirty years' 
labour, he succeeded in raising the revenue from thirty- 
two millions of livres to ninety-two millions net, — one- 
half only of the increase being due to additional taxa- 
tion, the other half to better order and economy in the 
collection. 

At the same time, Colbert was public-spirited and 
generous. He encouraged literature and the arts, as 
well as agriculture and commerce. He granted 
£160,000 in pensions to men of letters and science, 
amongst whom we find the names of the two Cor- 
neilles, Moliere, Eacine, Perrault, and Mezerai. Nor 
did he confine his liberality to the distinguished men 
of France, for he was equally liberal to foreigners who 
had settled in the country. Thus Huyghens, the dis- 
tinguished Dutch natural philosopher, and Vossius, the 
geographer, were among his list of pensioners. He 
granted £208,000 to the Gobelins and other manu- 
factures in Paris, besides other donations to those in 



chap. vii. ABSOLUTISM OF LOUIS XIV. 



103 



the provinces. He munificently supported the Paris 
Observatories, and contributed to found the Academy 
of Inscriptions, the Academy of Sciences, and the 
Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In short, Col- 
bert was one of the most enlightened, sagacious, liberal, 
and honourable ministers who ever served a monarch 
or a nation. 

But behind the splendid orclonnances of Colbert 
there stood a superior power, the master of France 
himself — " the Most Christian King, " Louis XIV. 
Eichelieu and Mazarin had, by crushing all other 
powers in the state — nobles, parliament, and people 
— prepared the way for the reign of this most abso- 
lute and uncontrolled of French monarchs.* He 
was proud, ambitious, fond of power, and believed him- 
self to be the greatest of men. He would have every- 
thing centre in the kings majesty. At the death of 
Mazarin in 1661, when his ministers asked to whom 
they were thenceforward to address themselves, his 
reply was — "A moi." The well-known saying — " L'etat, 
c'est moi," belongs to him. And his people took him 
at his word. They bowed down before him — rank, 
talent, and beauty — and vied with each other who 
should bow the lowest. 

While Colbert was striving to restore the finances 

* The engrained absolutism and child. Instead of such maxims as — 
egotism of Louis XIV., M. Feuillet "Evil communications corrupt good 
contends, were at their acme from his manners," or " Virtue is its own re- 
earliest years. In the public library ward," the copy set for him was this : 
at St. Petersburg, under a glass case, "Les rois font tout ce qu'ils veulent." 
may be seen one of the copy-books in — Edin. Review. ' 
which he practised writing when a 



164 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



of France by the peaceful development of its industry, 
the magnificent king, his mind far above mercantile 
considerations, "was bent on achieving glory by the 
conquest of adjoining territories. Thus, while the 
minister was, in 1668, engaged in laboriously organis- 
ing his commercial system, Louis wrote to Charles II. 
with the air of an Alexander the Great, saving — " If 
the English are satisfied to be the merchants of the 
world, and leave me to conquer it, the matter can 
easily be arranged : of the commerce of the globe, 
three parts to England, and one part to France."* 
Nor was this a mere whim of the king : it was the 
fixed idea of his life. 

Louis went to war with Spain. He overran Flan- 
ders, won victories, and France paid for the glory in 
an increase of taxes. He next made war with Holland. 
There were more battles, and less glory, but the same 
inevitable taxes. War in Germany followed, during 
which there were the great sieges of Besancon, Salin, 
and Dole; though this time there was no glory. 
Again Colbert was appealed to for money. But France 
had already been taxed almost to the utmost. The 
king told the minister, in 1673, that he must find 
sixty millions of livres more; "if he did not, another 
would." Thus the war had become a question mainly 
of money, and money Colbert must find. Forced 
loans were then had recourse to, the taxes were in- 
creased, honours and places were sold, and the money 
was eventually raised. 

* Mignet — Negoc. cle la Success. d'Esp. iii. 63. 



CHAP. VII. 



DEATH OF COLBERT. 



1G5 



The extravagance of Louis knew no bounds. 
Versailles was pulled down, and rebuilt at enormous 
cost. Immense sums were lavished in carrying out 
the designs of Vauban, and France was surrounded 
with a belt of three hundred fortresses. Various other 
spendthrift schemes were set on foot, until Louis had 
accumulated a debt equal to £100,000,000 sterling. 
Colbert at last succumbed, crushed in body and mind. 
He died in 1683, worn out with toil, mortified and 
heart-broken at the failure of all his plans. The 
people, enraged at the taxes which oppressed them, 
laid the blame at the door of the minister ; and his 
corpse was buried at night, attended by a military 
escort to protect it from the fury of the mob.* 

Colbert did not live to witness the more disgraceful 
events which characterised the later part of the reign 
of Louis XIV. The wars which that monarch waged 
with Spain, Germany, and Holland, for conquest and 
glory, were carried on against men with arms in their 
hands, capable of defending themselves. But the wars 
which he waged against his own subjects — the dragon- 
nades and persecutions which preceded and followed 

* II etait mort de la ruine publique, de la grille de Versailles. Colbert 

mc-rt de ne pouvoir rien et d'avoir reutra, s'alita, ne se leva pas. . . 

perdu l'esperance. On lui cliercliait L'immense malediction sous laquelle 

de querelles ridicules. Le roi lui il mourait, le troubla a son lit de 

reprochait la depense de Versailles, mort. Un lettre du roi lui vint, et il 

fait malgre lui. II lui citait Louvois, ne voulat pas la lire : "Si j'avais fait 

ces travaux de ma§onnerie et des pour Dieu," dit il, "ce que j'ai fait 

tranchees faits pour rien par le solclat, pour cet homme, je serais sur d'etre 

le paysan, comme si les travaux d'art sauve, et je ne sais pas ou je vais 

d'un palais etaient meme chose. II . . . ."■ — Michelet — Louis XIV., 

l'acheva en le querillant sur le prix pp. 276-282. 



166 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap vii. 



the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes, of which the 
victims were defenceless men, women, and children — 
were simply ferocious and barbarous, and must ever 
attach the reputation of Infamous to the name of Louis 
XIV., in history miscalled " The Great." 

One of the kings first acts, on assuming the 
supreme control of affairs at the death of Mazarin, 
was significant of his future policy with regard to the 
Huguenots. Among the representatives of the various 
public bodies who came to tender him their congratu- 
lations, there appeared a deputation of Protestant 
ministers, headed by their president Vignole ; but the 
king refused to receive them, and directed that they 
should be ordered to leave Paris forthwith. Louis 
was not slow to follow up this intimation by measures 
of a more positive kind, for he had been carefully 
taught to hate Protestantism ; and now that he pos- 
sessed unrestrained power, he flattered himself with 
the idea of compelling the Huguenots to abandon their 
convictions and adopt his own. His minister Louvois 
wrote to the governors throughout the provinces, that 
"his Majesty will not suffer any person in his king- 
dom but those who are of his religion;" and orders 
were shortly after issued that Protestantism must cease 
to exist, and that the Huguenots must everywhere 
conform to the royal will. 

A series of edicts was accordingly published with 
the object of carrying the kings purposes into effect. 
The conferences of the Protestants were declared to 
be suppressed. Though worship was still permitted 



chap. vii. EDICTS AGAINST THE HUGUENOTS. 167 



in their churches, the singing of psalms in private 
dwellings was declared to be forbidden. Spies were 
sent among them, to report the terms on which the 
Huguenot pastors spoke of the Eoman Catholic reli- 
gion, and if any fault could be found with them, they 
were cited before the tribunals for blasphemy. The 
priests were authorised to enter the chambers of sick 
Protestants, and entreat them whether they would be 
converted or die in their heresy. Protestant children 
were invited to declare themselves against the religion 
of their parents. Boys of fourteen and girls of twelve 
years old might, on embracing Eoman Catholicism, 
become enfranchised and entirely free from parental 
control. In that case the parents were further re- 
quired to place and maintain their children in any 
Eoman Catholic school into which they might wish 
to go.* 

The HuoTienots were ao;am debarred from holding 
public offices, though a few, such as Marshal Turenne 
and Admiral Duquesne, who were Protestants, broke 
through this barrier by the splendour of their services 
to the state. In some provinces, the exclusion was so 
severe that a profession of the Eoman Catholic faith 
was required from simple artizans — shoemakers, car- 
penters, and the like — before they were permitted to 
labour at their callings.t 

* Ordinance of 21th March 1661. munity, having "been instituted by 

t A ludicrous instance of this oc- St. Louis, could not admit heretics, 

curred at Paris, where the corporation and this reclamation was gravely con- 

of launch-esses laid a remonstrance firmed by a decree of the 21st August 

before the council that their com- 1665. The corporation nevertheless 



168 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vn. 



Colbert, while lie lived, endeavoured to restrain 
the king, and to abate these intolerable persecu- 
tions, which dogged the Huguenots at every step. 
He continued to employ them in the departments of 
finance, finding no honester nor abler servants. He 
also encouraged the merchants and manufacturers to 
persevere in their industrial operations, which he 
regarded as essential to the prosperity and well-being 
of the kingdom. He took the opportunity of caution- 
ing the king lest the measures he was enforcing might 
tend, if carried out, to the impoverishment of France 
and the aggrandisement of her rivals. " I am sorry to 
say it," said he to Louis, "that too many of your 
Majesty's subjects are already amongst your neighbours 
as footmen and valets for their daily bread ; many of 
the artizans, too, are fled from the severity of your 
collectors ; they are at this time improving the 
manufactures of your enemies." But all Colbert's 
expostulations were in vain ; the Jesuits were stronger 
than he was, and the king was in their hands ; besides, 
Colbert's power was on the decline, and he too had to 
succumb to the will of his royal master, who would 
not relieve even the highest genius from that absolute 
submission which he required from his courtiers. 

In 1666, the queen-mother died, leaving to her son, 
as her last bequest, that he should suppress and exter- 
minate heresy within his dominions. The king knew 



notoriously contained many abandoned by profligacy. — De Felice — History of 
women, but the orthodox laundresses the Protestants of France, p. 296 — 
were more distressed by heresy than Transl. London, 1853. 



CHAP. VII. 



EMIGRA TIOX PROHIBITED. 



1G9 



that lie had often grieved his royal mother by his 
notorious licentiousness, and he was now ready to atone 
for the wickedness of his past life by obeying her wishes. 
The Bishop of Meaux exhorted hirn to press on in the 
path his sainted mother had pointed out to him. " 
kings ! " said he, " exercise your power boldly, for it is 
divine — ye are gods ! " Louis was not slack in obey- 
ing the injunction, which so completely fell in with 
his own ideas of royal omnipotence. 

The Huguenots had already taken alarm at the 
renewal of the persecution; and such of them as 
could readily dispose of their property and goods, were 
beoinnino; to leave the kingrlom in considerable numbers 
for the purpose of establishing themselves in foreign 
countries. To prevent this, the king issued an edict 
forbidding French subjects' from proceeding abroad 
without express permission, under penalty of confisca- 
tion of their goods and property. This was followed by 
a succession of severe measures for the conversion or 
extirpation of such of the Protestants- — in numbers 
about a million and a half — as had not by this time 
contrived to make their escape from the kingdom. 
The kidnapping of Protestant children was actively 
set on foot by the agents of the Eoman Catholic priests ; 
and their parents were subjected to heavy penalties if 
they ventured to complain. Orders were issued to pull 
down the Protestant places of worship, and as many 
as eighty were shortly destroyed in one diocese. 

The HuoTienots offered no resistance. All that 

o 

they did was to meet together and pray that the 



170 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vti. 



king's heart might yet be softened towards them. 
Blow upon blow followed. Protestants were forbidden 
to print books without the authority of magistrates of 
the Komish Communion. Protestant teachers were 
interdicted from teaching children anything more than 
reading, writing, and arithmetic. Such pastors as 
held meetings amid the ruins of the churches which 
had been pulled down, were condemned to do penance 
with a rope round their neck, after which they were to 
be banished the kingdom. Protestants were only 
allowed to bury their dead at daybreak or at nightfall. 
They were prohibited from singing psalms on land or 
on water, in workshops or in dwellings. If a priestly 
procession passed one of their churches while the 
psalms were being sung, they must stop instantly on 
pain of the fine or imprisonment of the officiating 
minister. 

In short, from the pettiest annoyance to the most 
exasperating cruelty, nothing was wanting on the part 
of the " Most Christian King " and his abettors. Their 
intention probably was to exasperate the Huguenots 
into open resistance, with the object of finding a pre- 
text for a second massacre of St. Bartholomew. But 
the Huguenots would not be exasperated. They bore 
their trials bravely and patiently, hoping and praying 
that the king's heart would yet relent, and that they 
might still be permitted to worship God according to 
conscience. 

All their patience and resignation were however in 
vain, and from day to day the persecution became more 



CHAP. VII. 



MADAME DE MA IN TENON. 



171 



oppressive and intolerable. In the intervals of his 
scandalous amours, the king held conferences with his 
spiritual directors, to whom he was from time to time 
driven by bilious disease and the fear of death. He 
forsook Madame de La Valliere for Madame de 
Montespan ; and Madame de Montespan for Madame 
de Maintenon ; ever and anon taking counsel with his 
Jesuit confessor Pere La Chaise. Madame de Main- 
tenon was the instrument of the latter, and between 
the two, the " conversion " of the king was believed to 
be imminent. In his recurring attacks of illness, his 
conscience became increasingly uneasy ; confessor and 
mistress co-operated in turning his moroseness to 
account ; and it was observed that every royal attack 
of bile was followed by some new edict of persecution 
against the Huguenots. 

Madame de Maintenon, the last favourite, was the 
widow of Scarron, the deformed wit and scoffer. She 
belonged to the celebrated Huguenot family of D'Au- 
bigny ; her grandfather having been one of the most 
devoted followers of Henry IV. Her father led a pro- 
fligate life; but she herself was brought up in the 
family faith. A Bonian Catholic relative, however, 
acting on the authority conferred by the royal edict 
of abducting Protestant children, had the girl forcibly 
conveyed to the convent of Ursulines at Niort, from 
which she was transferred to the Ursulines at Paris, 
where, after some resistance, she abjured her faith and 
became a Eoman Catholic. She left the convent to 
enter the world through Scarron's door. When the 



172 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



witty cripple married her, lie said " his bride liad 
brought with her an annual income of four louis, two 
large and very mischievous eyes, a fine bust, an exqui- 
site pair of hands, and a large amount of wit/' 

Scarron s house was the resort of the gayest and 
loosest as well as the most accomplished persons of the 
time • and there his young wife acquired that know- 
ledge of the world, and conversational accomplishment, 
and probably social ambition, which she afterwards 
turned so artfully and unscrupulously to account. One 
of her intimate friends was the notorious Ninon de 
TEnclos, and it is not improbable that the sight of that 
woman, courted by the fashionable world after thirty 
years of polished profligacy, exercised a powerful in- 
fluence on the subsequent career of Madame Scarron. 

At Scarron's death, his young widow succeeded in 
obtaining the post of governess to the children of 
Madame de Montespan, the king s then mistress, whom 
she speedily superseded. She secured a footing in the 
king's chamber, to the exclusion of the queen, who was 
dying by inches,* and by her adroitness, tact, and pre- 
tended devotion, she contrived to exercise an extra- 
ordinary influence over Louis — so much so that at 
length even the priests could only obtain access to him 
through her. She undertook to assist them in effect- 
ing his " conversion," and laboured at the work four 

* Le roi tua la reine, comme Col- Kochefoucauld la prit par les bras, lui 

bert, sans s'en apercevoir. . . . Elle dit : " Le roi a besoin de vous." Et 

mourat (30 juillet 1683). Madame de il la poussa chez le roi. A lmstant 

Maintenon la quittait expiree et sor- tous le deux partirent pour Saint- 

tait de la ehambre, lorsque M. de la Cloud. — Michelet, 273-4. 



chap. vii. ATTEMPTED PURCHASE OF COXSCIEXCES. 17 3 



liours a-day, reporting progress from time to time to 
Pere la Chaise his confessor. She early discovered the 
kind's rooted hatred towards the Huguenots, and con- 
formed herself to it accordingly, increasing her influ- 
ence over him by artfully fanning the flames of his 
fury against her quondam co-religionists : and fiercer 
and fiercer edicts were issued against them in quick 
succession. 

Before the extremest measures were however re- 
sorted to, an attempt was made to buy over the Pro- 
testants wholesale. The king consecrated to this traffic 
one-third of the revenue of the benefices which fell to 
the crown, during the period of then 1 vacancy ; and 
the fund became very large through the benefices being 
purposely left vacant. A " converted'"' Huguenot 
named Pelisson was employed to administer the fund ; 
and he published long lists of " conversions" in the 
Gazette ; but he concealed the fact that the takers of 
his bribes belonged to the dregs of the people. At 
length many were detected undergoing " conversion" 
several times over: upon which a proclamation was 
published that persons found guilty of this offence 
would have their goods and property forfeited, and be 
sentenced to perpetual banishment. 

The great body of the Huguenots remaining im- 
movable and refusing to be converted, it was found 
necessary to resort to more violent measures. They 
were next attacked in their tenderest place — through 
their affections. Children of seven years old were em- 
powered to leave their parents and become converted ; 



174 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vit. 



and many were forcibly abducted from their homes, 
and immured in convent-prisons for education in the 
Eomish faith at the expense of their parents. Another 
exquisite stroke of cruelty followed. While such Hu- 
guenots as conformed were declared to be exempt from 
supplying quarters for the soldiery, the obstinate and 
unconverted were ordered to have an extra number 
quartered on them. Louvois wrote to Marillac, Inten- 
dant of Poitou, in March 1681, that he was about to 
send a regiment of horse into that province. " His 
Majesty," he said, "has heard with much joy of the 
great number of persons who continue to be converted 
in your department. He wishes you to persist in your 
endeavours, and desires that the greater number of 
horsemen and officers should be billeted upon the Pro- 
testants. If, according to a just distribution, ten would 
be quartered upon the members of the reformed religion, 
you may order them to accommodate twenty."" The 
opposition of Colbert for a time delayed the execution 
of this project, but not for long. It was the first at- 
tempt at the dragonnades. 

Two years later, in 1683, the year of Colbert's death, 
the military executions began. Pity, terror, and an- 
guish had by tons agitated the minds of the Pro- 
testants, until at length they were reduced to a state 
almost of despair. Life was made almost intolerable 
to them. All careers were closed against them ; and 
Protestants of the working; class were under the neces- 
sity of abjuring or starving. The mob, observing that 

* De Felice — History of the Protestants of France, p. 315. 



chap. vii. PROTESTANT CHURCHES WRECKED. 



175 



the Protestants were no longer within the pale of the 
law, took the opportunity of wreaking all manner of 
outrages on them. They broke into their churches, 
tore up the benches, and, placing the Bibles and hymn- 
books in a pile, set the whole on fire ; the authorities 
usually setting their sanction on the proceedings of 
the rioters by banishing the burned-out ministers, and 
interdicting the further celebration of worship in the 
destroyed churches. 

The Huguenots of Dauphiny were at last stung 
into a show of resistance, and furnished the king 
with the pretext which he wanted for ordering a 
general slaughter of those of his subjects who would 
not be " converted " to his religion. A large congrega- 
tion of Huguenots assembled one day amidst the 
ruins of a wrecked church to celebrate worship and 
pray for the king. The Eoman Catholics thereupon 
raised the alarm that this meeting was held for the 
purpose of organising a rebellion. The spark thus 
kindled in Dauphiny burst into flame in the Viverais 
and even in Languedoc ; and troops were brought from 
all quarters to crush the apprehended outbreak. Mean- 
while the Huguenots continued to hold their religious 
meetings ; and a number of them were found one day 
assembled outside Bordeaux, where they had met to 
pray. There the dragoons fell upon them, cutting down 
hundreds, and dispersing the rest. " It was a mere but- 
chery," says Eulhieres, " without the show of a combat." 
Several were apprehended and offered pardon if they 
would abjure ; but they refused, and were hanged. 



176 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



Noailles, then governor, seized the opportunity of 
advancing himself in the royal favour by ordering a 
general massacre. He obeyed to the letter the cruel 
orders of Louvois, the king s minister, who prescribed 
desolation. Cruelty raged for a time uncontrolled from 
Grenoble to Bordeaux. There were massacres in the 
Viverais and massacres in the Cevennes. An entire 
army had converged on Nismes, and there was so hor- 
rible a dragonnade that the city was " converted " in 
twenty-four hours. Noailles wrote to the king that 
there had indeed been some slight disorder, but that 
everything had been conducted with great judgment 
and discipline, and he promised with his head that 
before the next 25th of November (1683) there would 
be no more Huguenots in Languedoc* 

Like cruelties followed all over France. More 
Protestant churches were pulled down, and the pro- 
perty that belonged to them was confiscated for the 
benefit of the Koman Catholic hospitals. Many of the 
Huguenot landowners had already left the kingdom, 
and others were preparing to follow them. But this 
did not suit the views of the monarch and his advisers ; 
and the ordinances were ordered to be put in force 
which interdicted emigration, with the addition of 
condemnation to the galleys for life of heads of families 
found attempting to escape, and a fine of three thousand 
livres against any person found encouraging or assisting 
them. By the same ordinance all contracts for the sale 
of property made by the Beformed one year before the 

* Memoires de Noailles, 15 ; Michelet — Louis XIV. 275-6. 



CHAP. VII. 



INCIDENT A T SAINTONGE. 



177 



date of their emigration were declared nullified. The 
consequence was that many landed estates were seized 
and sold, of which Madame de Maintenon, the king s 
mistress, artfully improved the opportunity. Writing 
to her brother, for whom she had obtained from the 
king a gratuity of 800,000 francs, she said : "I beg of 
you carefully to use the money you are about to re- 
ceive. Estates in Poitou may be o-ot for nothing ; the 
desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell 
more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions 
in Poitou."* 

Thus were the poor Huguenots trodden under foot 
— persecuted, maltreated, fined, flogged, hanged, or 
sabred ; nevertheless, many of those who survived still 
remained faithful. Towards the end of 1684, a pain- 
ful incident occurred at Marennes in Saintonge, where 
the Reformed religion extensively prevailed, notwith- 
standing the ferocity of the persecution. The church 
there comprised from 13,000 to 14,000 persons; but 
on the pretence that some children of the new con- 
verts to Eomanism had been permitted to enter the 
building (a crime in the eye of the law), the congre- 
gation was ordered, late one Saturday evening, to be 
suppressed. On the Sunday morning a large number 
of worshippers appeared at the church doors, some of 
whom had come from a great distance — then own 
churches being already closed or pulled down — and 
amongst them were twenty-three infants brought for 
baptism. It was winter ; the cold was intense ; and 

* De Felice — Book iii. chap. 15. p. 317. 
N 



178, RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



no shelter being permitted within the closed church, 
the poor things were mostly frozen to death on their 
mothers bosoms. Loud sobbing and wailing rose from 
the crowd ; all wept, even the men ; but they found 
consolation in prayer, and resolved, in this their darkest 
hour, to be faithful to the end, even unto death. 

A large body of troops lay encamped in Beam in 
the early part of 1685, to watch the movements of the 
Spanish army ; but a truce having been agreed upon, 
the Marquis de Louvois resolved to employ his regi- 
ments in converting the Huguenots of the surrounding 
districts after the methods adopted by Noailles at 
Nismes. Some hundreds of Bearnese Protestants 
having been driven by force into a church where the 
Bishop of Lescar officiated, the doors were closed, and 
the poor people compelled to kneel down and receive 
the bishop's absolution at the point of the sword. To 
escape their tormentors, the Eeformed fled into the 
woods, the wildernesses, and the caverns of the 
Pyrenees. They were pursued like wild beasts, 
brought back to their dwellings by force, and com- 
pelled to board and lodge their persecutors. The 
dragoons entered the houses with drawn swords, 
shouting, " Kill, kill, or become Catholics." The 
scenes of brutal outrage which occurred during these 
dragonnades cannot be described. These soldiers were 
among the roughest, loosest, cruellest of men.* 55 " They 

* Michelet says the word given to and he adds the following description 

them hy their commander, Lnxem- of " M. le dragon : " — " Eosse par l'om- 

bourg, when in Holland, was, "Amu- cier, il le rendit au paysan. Vrai 

sez vous, enfants ! pillez et violez ! " singe, il aimait a mal faire, et plus 



CHAP. VII. 



DRAGONNADES IN BEARN. 



179 



suspended their victims with ropes, blowing tobacco- 
smoke into their nostrils and mouths, and practising 
upon them a hundred other nameless cruelties, until 
they reduced their hosts to a condition of not knowing 
what they did, and of promising everything to rid 
themselves of their tormentors. 4 ' 5 " No wonder that the 
constancy of the Bearnese at length yielded to the 
prolonged rigour of these torments, and that they 
hastened to the priests in crowds to abjure their re- 
ligion. 

The success of the dragonnades in enforcing con- 
version in Beam encouraged the king to employ the 
same means elsewhere ; and in the course of four 
months, Languedoc, Guienne, Saintonge, Poitou, 
Viverais, Dauphiny, Cevennes, Provence, and Gex, 



mal que les autres ; c'etait son amour- 
propre. II etait ravi d'etre craint, 
criait, cassait, battait, tenait a ce 
qu'on dit. Le dragon c'est le diable 
a quatre." — Louis XIV. et la Revo- 
cation de VEdit de Nantes, pp. 304-5. 
Sucli were the soldiery who proceeded 
to persecute the men, women, and 
children of the province of Beam ; 
and every torture which they could 
inflict without killing them outright, 
they inflicted on the Huguenots. 

t Elie Benoit, in his History of the 
Edict of Nantes, fills page after page 
with descriptions of the cruelties per- 
petrated by the dragoons on the poor 
Huguenots. In one passage he says : 
" The horsemen fastened crosses to 
the mouth of their musquetoons to 
compel the people to kiss them by 
force, and when they met with any 



resistance, they thrust their crosses 
into the face and stomach of their un- 
happy victims. They spared children 
as little as persons of more advanced 
age, and without the slightest regard 
for their years, they loaded them with 
blows with the flat of their swords, or 
with the butt-end of their musquet- 
oons ; and such was their violence, 
that many were made cripples for life. 
These infamous wretches took a plea- 
sure in maltreating women. They 
beat them with whips ; they struck 
them on the face with canes in order 
to disfigure them ; they dragged them 
by their hair in the mud and over the 
stones. Sometimes the soldiers, meet- 
ing labourers on the road, or with 
their carts, drove them to the Roman 
Catholic churches, pricking them like 
cattle with their spurs, to hasten their 
unwilling march." 



180 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



were scoured by the new missionaries of the Church. 
Neither age nor sex was spared. The men who re- 
fused to be converted were thrown into dungeons, and 
the women were immured in prison- convents. Louvois 
thus reported the results of his operations, in Sep- 
tember 1685: — "Sixty thousand conversions have 
been made in the district of Bordeaux, and twenty 
thousand in that of Montauban. So rapid is the pro- 
gress, that before the end of the month ten thousand 
Protestants will not be left in the district of Bour- 
deaux, where there were one hundred and fifty thousand 
on the 15th of last month." Noailles wrote to a 
similar effect from Nismes : — " The most influential 
people," said he, " abjured in the church the day fol- 
lowing my arrival. There was a slackening after- 
wards, but matters soon assumed a proper shape with 
the help of some billetings on the dwellings of the 
most obstinate." 

In the meantime, while these forced conversions of 
the Huguenots were being made by the dragoons of 
De Louvois and De Noailles, Madame de Maintenon 
continued to labour at the conversion of the king 
himself. She was materially assisted by her royal 
paramours bad digestion; and by the qualms of 
conscience which from time to time beset him at 
the dissoluteness of his past life. Every twinge 
of pain, every fit of colic, every prick of con- 
science, was succeeded by new resolutions to extirpate 
heresy. Penance must be done for his incontinence ; 
but not by himself. It was the virtuous Huguenots 



i 

chap. vir. " CONVERSION" OF LOUIS XIV. 181 

that must suffer vicariously for him ; and, by punish- 
ing them, he flattered himself that he was expiating 
his own sins. " It was not only his amours which de- 
serve censure," says Sismondi, " although the scandal of 
their publicity, the dignities to which he raised the 
children of his adultery, and the constant humiliation 
to which he subjected his wife, add greatly to his 
offence against public morality. . . He acknowledged 
in his judgments, and in his rigour towards his people, 
no rule but his own will. At the very moment that 
his subjects were dying of famine, he retrenched no- 
thing from his prodigalities. Those who boasted of 
having converted him, had never represented to him 
more than two duties — that of renouncing his in- 
continence, and that of extirpating heresy in his 
dominions."* 

The farce of Louis' "conversion" went on. In 
August 1684, Madame de Maintenon wrote thus : — 
" The king is prepared to do everything that shall be 
judged useful for the welfare of religion ; this under- 
taking will cover him with glory before God and man !" 
The dragonnades were then in full career throughout 
the southern provinces, and a long wail of anguish was 
rising from the persecuted all over France. In 1685 
the king's sufferings increased, and his conversion be- 
came imminent. His miserable body was already 
beginning to decay ; but he was willing to make a 
sacrifice to God of what the devil had left of it. Not 
only did he lose his teeth, but caries in the jaw-bone 

* De Sismondi — Histoire de France, t. xxv. p. 481. 



182 RENEWED PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE, chap. vii. 



developed itself ; and when he drank the liquid passed 
through his nostrils * In this shocking state Madame 
de Maintenon became his nurse. 

The Jesuits now obtained all that they wanted. 
They made a compact with Madame by which she was 
to advise the king to revoke the Edict of Nantes, while 
they were to consent to her marriage with him. Pere 
la Chaise, his confessor, advised a private marriage, 
and the ceremony was performed at Versailles by the 
archbishop of Paris, in the presence of the confessor 
and two more witnesses. The precise date of the 
transaction is not known ; but it is surmised that the 
edict was revoked one day, arid the marriage took 
place the next.t 

The Act of Eevocation was published on the 22d 
of October 1685. It was the death-knell of the 
Huguenots. 

* Michelet cites as liis authority jour precis, on l'ignore. On doit con- 
for tliis statement Journal MS. des jecturer qu'il eut lieu apres le jour de 
Mcclecins, 1685. la Eevocation, declaree a la fin d'Oc- 

t Madame dit (Memoires, ii. 108) tobre, ce jour ou le roi tint parole, 
que le marriage eut lieu deux ans apres accorda l'acte qu'elle avait consenti, 
la mort de la reine, done dans les der- et ou elle fut ainsi engagee sans retour. 
niers mois de 1685. M. de Noailles — Michelet — Louis XIV. et la Revo- 
(ii. 121) etablit la meme date. Pourle cation, p. 300. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



RENEWED FLIGHT OF THE HUGUENOTS. 

Great was the rejoicing of the Jesuits on the Revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes. Rome sprang up with a 
shout of joy to celebrate the event. Te Deums were 
sung, processions went from shrine to shrine, and the 
Pope sent a brief to Louis conveying to him the con- 
gratulations and praises of the Romish Church. Public 
thanksgivings were held at Paris, in which the people 
eagerly took part, thus making themselves accom- 
plices in' the proscription by the king of their fellow- 
subjects. The provost and sheriffs had a statue of 
Louis erected at the Hotel de Ville, bearing the in- 
scription— Luduvico Magno, victori perpetuo, ecclesia 
ac regum, dignitatis assertori* Leseur was employed 
to paint the subject for the gallery at Versailles, and 
medals were struck to commemorate the extinction of 
Protestantism in France. 

The Roman Catholic clergy were almost beside them- 
selves with joy. The eloquent Bossuet was especially 
fervent in his praises of the monarch: — "Touched 
by so many marvels/ 5 said he (15th January 1686), 
" let us expand our hearts in praise of the piety of the 



* The statue was pulled down in 1792, and cast into cannon which 
thundered at Valmy. 



184 RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



Great Louis. Let our acclamations ascend to heaven, 
and let us say to this new Constantine, this new Theo- 
dosius, what the six hundred and thirty fathers said 
in the Council of Chalcedon, ' You have strengthened 
the faith, you have exterminated the heretics : King 
of Heaven, preserve the king of earth.'" Massillon 
also indulged in a like strain of exultation : — " The 
profane temples," said he, " are destroyed, the pulpits 
of seduction are cast down, the prophets of falsehood 
are torn from their flocks. At the first blow dealt to 
it by Louis, heresy falls, disappears, and is reduced 
either to hide itself in the obscurity whence it issued, 
or to cross the seas, and to bear with it into foreign 
lands its false gods, its bitterness, and its rage." 

Let us now see what the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes involved. The demolition of all the remain- 
ing Protestant temples throughout France, and the 
entire proscription of the Protestant religion ; the pro- 
hibition of even private worship under penalty of con- 
fiscation of body and property ; the banishment of all 
Protestant pastors from France within fifteen days; 
the closing of all Protestant schools ; the prohibition 
of parents to instruct their children in the Protestant 
faith ; the injunction upon them, under a penalty of 
five hundred livres in each case, to have their children 
baptized by the parish priest, and brought up in the 
Roman Catholic religion ; the confiscation of the pro- 
perty and goods of all Protestant refugees who failed to 
return to France within four months ; the penalty of 
the galleys for life to all men, and of imprisonment for 



CHAr. VIII. 



THE MILITARY JACQUERIE. 



185 



life to all women, detected in the act of attempting to 
escape from France. 

Such were a few of the cruel, dastardly, and in- 
human provisions of the Edict of Eevocation. Such 
were the marvels of the piety of the Great Louis, which 
were so eloquently eulogised by Bossuet and Massillon. 
The Edict of Eevocation was a proclamation of war 
by the armed against the unarmed — a war against 
peaceable men, women, and children — a war against 
property, against family, against society, against public 
morality, and, more than all, against the rights of 
conscience. 

The military jacquerie at once began. The very 
day on which the Edict of Eevocation was registered, 
steps were taken to destroy the great Protestant church 
at Charenton, near Paris. It had been the work of 
the celebrated architect Debrosses, and was capable 
of containing 14,000 persons. In five days it was 
levelled with the ground. The great temple of Quevilly, 
near Eouen, of nearly equal size, in which the celebrated 
minister Jacques Basnage preached, was in like manner 
demolished. At Tours, at Nismes, at Montauban, and 
all over France, the same scenes were enacted, the mob 
eagerly joining in the work of demolition with levers 
and pickaxes. Eight hundred Protestant churches 
were thus thrown down in a few weeks. 

The provisions of the Edict of Eevocation were 
rigorously put in force ; and they were succeeded by 
numerous others of like spirit. Thus Protestants were 
commanded to employ only Eoman Catholic servants, 



186 RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



under penalty of a fine of 1000 livres, while Pro- 
testant servants were forbidden to serve either Pro- 
testant or Eoman Catholic employers. If any men- 
servants were detected violating this law, they were 
to be sent to the galleys ; whereas women-servants 
were to be flogged and branded with a fleur-de-lis — 
the emblazonment of the " Most Christian King." Pro- 
testant pastors found lurking in France after the expiry 
of the fifteen days were to be condemned to death ; 
and any of the king's subjects found giving harbour to 
the pastors were to be condemned — the men to be 
galley-slaves, the women to imprisonment for life. 
The reward of 5500 livres was offered for the appre- 
hension of any Protestant pastor. 

The Huguenots were not even permitted to die 
in peace, but were pursued to death's door and into 
the grave itself. They were forbidden to solicit the 
offices of those of their own faith, and were required to 
confess and receive unction from the priests, on penalty 
of having their bodies when dead removed from their 
dwelling by the common hangman and flung into the 
public sewer * In the event of the sick Protestant 



* The body of the distinguished M. 
de Chenevix was subjected to this brutal 
indignity. He was a gentleman illus- 
trious for his learning and piety, and 
had been councillor to the king in the 
court of Metz. In 1686 he fell dan- 
gerously ill, when the curate of the 
parish, forcing himself into his pre- 
sence, importuned him to confess, 
when he replied that he declined to 
confess to any but God, who alone 



could forgive his sins. The arch- 
bishop next visited him, urging him 
to communicate before he died, at the 
same time informing him of the pe- 
nalties decreed by the king against 
such as died without receiving the 
sacrament. He refused, declaring 
that he would never communicate 
after the popish manner. At his 
death, shortly after, orders were given 
that his body should be removed by 



chap. viii. CONSTANCY OF THE HUGUENOTS. 



187 



recovering, after having rejected the viaticum, he was 
to be condemned to perpetual confinement at the gal- 
leys, or imprisonment for life, with confiscation of all 
his property. Such were the measures by which the 
great Louis sought to win back erring souls to Eome. 

Crushed, tormented, and persecuted by these ter- 
rible enactments, the Huguenots felt that life in France 
had become almost intolerable. It is true there was 
one alternative — conversion. But Louis XIV., with 
all his power, could not prevail against the impene- 
trable rampart of conscience ; and a large proportion 
of the Huguenots persistently refused to be converted. 
They would not act the terrible lie to God, and seek 
their personal safety at the price of hypocrisy. They 
would not become Eoman Catholics; they would rather 
die. There was only one other means of relief — flight 
from France. Yet it was a frightful alternative, to tear 
themselves from the country they loved, from friends 
and relatives, from the homes of their youth and the 



the executioner ; and his corpse was 
accordingly taken, dragged away on 
a hurdle, and cast upon a dunghill. 
About four hundred of his friends, of 
whom the greater number were women, 
proceeded thither by night to fetch 
the body away. They wrapped it in 
linen ; four men bore it aloft on their 
shoulders, and they buried it in a 
garden. While the corpse was being 
let down into the grave, the mourning 
assembly sang the 79th psalm, begin- 
ning, "Save me, God, for the waters 
are come into my soul." The brother 
of M. de Chenevix was a Protestant 
pastor, who was forced to fly at the 



Revocation, and took refuge in Eng- 
land. His son was a distinguished 
officer in the British army, and his 
grandson was made bishop of Killaloe 
in 1745, and afterwards of Waterford 
and Lismore. The present Arch- 
bishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix 
Trench, is his great grandson by the 
mother's side, being also descended, 
by the father's side, from another 
Huguenot family, the Trenches or De 
la Tranches, of whom the Earl of 
Clancarty is the head, who emigrated 
from France and settled in England 
shortly after the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew. 



188 RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



graves of their kindred, and fly — they knew not whither. 
The thought of self-banishment was so agonising that 
many hesitated long and prepared to endure much be- 
fore taking the irrevocable step ; and many more pre- 
pared to suffer death rather than leave their country 
and their home. 

Indeed, to fly in any direction became increasingly 
difficult from day to day. The frontiers were strongly 
patrolled by troops and gensdarmes ; the coast was 
closely watched by an armed coast-guard ; while ships 
of war cruised at sea to intercept and search out- 
ward-bound vessels. The law was strictly enforced 
against all persons taken in the act of flight. Under 
the original edict, detected fugitives were to be con- 
demned to the galleys for life, while their denouncers 
were to be rewarded with half their goods. But this 
punishment was not considered sufficiently severe ; 
and, on the 7th of May 1686, the king issued another 
edict, proclaiming that any captured fugitives, as well 
as any person found acting as their guide, would be 
condemned to death. 

But even these terrible penalties were not sufficient 
to prevent the flight of the Huguenots. Many of the 
more distinguished literary and scientific men of France 
had already escaped into other countries. When the 
Protestant University of Sedan was arbitrarily closed 
by the king in 1681, Jurieu, Professor of Hebrew and 
Theology, and Bayle, Professor of Philosophy, fled into 
Holland and obtained asylum there. The magistrates 
of Eotterdam expressly founded a new college for 



chap. viii. S CHOMBER G, RUVIGXY, DUQUESXE. 189 



education, in which the fugitives were both appointed 
to professorships. Huyghens also, the distinguished 
astronomer and mathematician, who had been induced 
by Colbert to settle in Paris, made haste to take refuge 
in Holland. Though not much of a Protestant, and 
indeed not much of a Christian, Huyghens would not 
-be a hypocrite ; and he renounced all honours and 
emoluments rather than conform to an institution and 
system which he detested. 

Amidst the general proscription, a few distinguished 
exceptions were made by the king, who granted per- 
mission to several laymen, in return for past public 
services, to leave the kingdom and settle abroad. 
Amongst these were Marshal Schomberg. one of the 
first soldiers of France, who had been commander-in- 
chief of its armies, and the Marquis de Kuvigny, one 
of her ablest ambassadors — whose only crime consisted 

in their beino- Protestants. The gallant Admiral Du- 
es o 

quesne also, the first sailor of France, was a Huguenot. 
The king sent for him and urged him to abjure his 
religion. But the old hero, pointing to his gray hair, 
replied, "For sixty years, sire, have I rendered unto 
Caesar the things which are Caesar's ; suffer me still to 
render unto God the things which are God's." Du- 
quesne was permitted to end his few remaining days 
in France, for he was then in his eightieth year ; but 
his two sons were allowed to emigrate, and they shortly 
after departed into Holland." 



* The eldest son, Henry, Marquis Switzerland to organise a flotilla on 
Duquesne, subsequently went to Lake Leman for the defence of the 



190 RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



The banished pastors were treated with especial 
severity. Fifteen days only had been allowed them to 
fly beyond the frontier, and if they tarried longer in 
their agonising leave-taking of their flocks, they were 
liable to be sent to the galleys for life. Yet with that 
exquisite malignity which characterised the acts of the 
monarch and his abettors, they were in some cases 
refused the necessary permits to pass the frontier, in 
order that they might thereby be brought within the 
range of the dreadful penalties proclaimed by the Act 
of Eevocation. The pastor Claude — one of the most 
eloquent preachers of his day, who had been one of the 
ministers of the great church of Charenton, was 
ordered to quit France within twenty-four hours, and 
he set out forthwith accompanied by one of the king s 
footmen, who saw him as far as Brussels. The other 
pastors of Paris were allowed two days to make their 
preparations for leaving. More time was allowed to 
those in the provinces ; but they were permitted to 
carry nothing with them, not even their children ; all 
under seven years of age being taken from them to be 
brought up in the religion of their persecutors. Even 

country against the Duke of Savoy Aubonne : — This tomb awaits Du- 

who then threatened it. "Henry had quesne's remains. You, who piass by, 

secretly carried off from Paris the question the court, the army, the 

heart of his father, whose memory church, and even Europe, Asia, Afri- 

Louis XIV. refused to honour by a ca, and the two oceans ; ask them why 

public monument. The body of that a superb mausoleum has been raised to 

great man had been refused to his son, the valiant Ruyter, and not to his 

who had prepared for it a burial-place conqueror Duquesne? . . I sec that, 

in a foreign land. He had the follow- out of respect for the Great King, you 

ing words engraved on the mausoleum dare not sjjeak." — Weiss — History of 

he had erected to him in the church of the French Protestant Refugees, 509. 



chap. vin. ITS HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE. 191 



infants at the breast must be given up ; and many a 
mother s heart was torn by conflicting feelings — the 
duty of following a husband on the road to banishment, 
or remaining behind to suckle a helpless infant. 

It may be asked — "Why rake up these horrors of 
the past, these tortures inflicted upon innocent women 
and children in times long since past and gone ? 
Simply because they are matters of history, which 
cannot be ignored or suppressed. They may be 
horrible to relate, it is true ; but they were far more 
horrible to suffer. And, however revolting they may 
now appear, any description of them, no matter how 
vivid or how detailed, must necessarily fall far short 
of the dreadful reality to those who endured them. 
They are, indeed, historical facts, full of significance 
and meaning, without a knowledge of which it were 
impossible to understand the extraordinary exodus of 
the French people which shortly followed, and which 
constituted one of the most important historical events 
of the seventeenth century. And, if we mistake not, 
they are equally necessary to an intelligent appreciation 
of the causes which led to the success of the English 
Eevolution of 1688 and the events which followed it, 
as well as of the still more recent French Eevolution 
of 1789. 

"When all the banished pastors had fled, those of 
their flocks who still remained steadfast prepared to 
follow them into exile ; for they felt it easier to be 
martyrs than apostates. Those who possessed goods 
and movables made haste to convert them into money 



192 RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



in such a way as to excite the least suspicion ; for 
spies were constantly on the watch, ready to denounce 
intended fugitives to the authorities. Such of them 
as were engaged in trade, commerce, and manufactures, 
were surrounded by difficulties ; yet they were pre- 
pared to dare and risk all rather than abjure their 
religion. They prepared to close their workshops, 
their tanneries, their paper-mills, their silk-manufac- 
tories, and the various branches of industry which 
they had built up, and to fly with the merest wreck of 
their fortunes into other countries. The owners of land 
had still greater difficulties to encounter. They were in 
a measure rooted to the soil; and according to the royal 
edict, if they emigrated without special permission, 
their property was liable to immediate confiscation by 
the state. Nevertheless, many of these, too, resolved 
to brave all risks and fly. 

When the full tide of the emigration set in, it was 
found difficult to guard the extensive French frontier 
so as effectually to prevent the escape of the fugitives. 
The high-roads as well as the by-ways were regularly 
patrolled day and night, and all the bridges leading out 
of France were strongly guarded. But the fugitives 
avoided the frequented routes, and crossed the frontier 
through forests, over trackless wastes, or by moun- 
tain-paths, where no patrols were on the watch ; and 
thus they contrived to escape in large numbers into 
Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. They mostly 
travelled by night, not in bands but in small parties, 
and often singly. When the members of a family pre- 



chap. viii. GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH. 193 



pared to fly, they fixed a rendezvous in some town 
across the nearest frontier ; then, after prayer and 
taking a tender leave of each other, they set out sepa- 
rately, and made for the agreed point of meeting, 
usually travelling in different directions. 

Many of the fugitives were of course captured by 
the king's agents. Along so wide a frontier, it was 
impossible always to elude their vigilance. To strike 
terror into such of the remaining Huguenots as might 
be contemplating their escape, the prisoners who were 
taken were led as a show through the principal towns, 
with heavy chains round their necks, in some cases 
weighing over fifty pounds. " Sometimes," says Benoit, 
" they were placed in carts with irons on their feet, 
and the chains were made fast to the cart. They 
were forced to make long marches ; and, when they 
sank under fatigue, blows compelled them to rise." * 
After they had been thus driven through the chief 
towns by way of example, the prisoners were sent 
to the galleys, where there were already more than a 
thousand by the end of 1686. The galley-slaves in- 
cluded men of all conditions : — pastors and peasants ; 
old men with white hairs and boys of tender years ; 
magistrates, officers, and men of gentle blood, mixed 
with thieves and murderers ; and no discrimination 
whatever was made in their classification, or in the 
barbarity of their treatment. 

These cruelties were, however, of no avail in check- 
ing the emigration. The Huguenots continued to fly 

* Elie Benoit — Histoirc de VEdit de Nantes, v. p. 964. 




194 



RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. vm. 



out of France in all directions. The Great Louis, still 
bent on their " conversion/' increased his guards along 
the frontiers. The soldiers were rewarded in propor- 
tion to the captures they effected. The aid of the fron- 
tier peasantry was also invited, and thousands of them 
joined the troops in guarding the highways, the 
bridges, the ferries, and all the avenues leading out of 
France. False statements were published by autho- 
rity, to the effect that such of the emigrants as had 
reached foreign countries were destitute and starving. 
It was stated that ten thousand of them had died of 
misery in England, and that most of those who sur- 
vived were imploring permission to return to France 
and abjure.* 

In vain ! the emigration continued. Some bought 
their way across the frontier ; others fought their way. 
They went in all sorts of disguises : some as pedlers, 
others as soldiers, huntsmen, valets, and beggars. Some, 
to disarm suspicion, even pretended to sell chaplets and 
rosaries. The Huguenots conducted the emigration on 
a regular system. They had itineraries prepared and 
secretly distributed, in which the safest routes and 
hiding-places were described in detail — a sort of " un- 
derground railroad," such as existed in the United 
States before the abolition of slavery there. Many 
escaped through the great forest of Ardennes into 
Luxembourg; others through the Yosges mountains 
into Germany ; and others through the passes of the 
Jura into Switzerland. Some were shot by the soldiers 

* Weiss — History of the French Protestant Refugees, p. 76. 



chap. viit. THE HUGUENOT WOMEN. 195 

and peasantry ; a still greater number were taken pri- 
soners and sent to the galleys ; yet many thousands of 
them nevertheless contrived to make their escape. 

The flight of men was accompanied by that of 
women, old and young ; often by mothers with infants 
in their arms. The hearts of the women were espe- 
cially lacerated by the cruelties inflicted on them 
through their affections ; by the tearing of their child- 
ren from them for the purpose of being educated in 
convents ; by the quartering of dragoons in their dwell- 
ings ; and by the various social atrocities which pre- 
ceded as well as followed the Edict of Kevocation* 
While many Protestant heads of families were ready 
to conform, in order to save their families from insult 
and outrage by a lawless and dissolute soldiery, the 
women often refused to follow their example, and en- 
treated their husbands to fly from the land where such 
barbarities had become legalised, and where this daily 
war was being carried on against womanhood and 
childhood — against innocence, morality, religion, and 



* The frightful cruelty of these 
measures shocked the Roman Catho- 
lic clergy themselves and, to their 
honour be it said, in many districts 
they refrained from putting them in 
force. On discovering this, Louis 
XIV., furiously zealous for the ex- 
tirpation of heresy, ordered his mini- 
ster De Portchar train to address a 
circular to the bishops of France, 
charging them with want of zeal in 
carrying his edicts into effect, and call- 
ing upon them to require the curates 



of their respective dioceses to enforce 
them without fail. — Coqueeel, His- 
toire des Eglises du Desert, i. p. 68. 
The priests who visited the slaves at 
the galleys were horribly shocked at 
the cruelties practised on them. The 
Abbe Jean Bion shed tears at the 
sight of the captives covered with 
bleeding wounds inflicted by the 
whip, and he could not resist the 
impression : " Their blood preached 
tome," says he in his Relation, " and 
I felt myself a Protestant." 



196 



RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



virtue. To women of pure feelings, life under such 
circumstances was more intolerable even than death. 

Everywhere, therefore, were the Huguenot women 
as well as the men found fleeing into exile. They 
mostly fled in disguise, often alone, to join their hus- 
bands or fathers at the appointed rendezvous. Benoit 
says that they cut off their hair, disfigured their faces 
with dyes, assumed the dress of pedlars or lacqueys, 
and condescended to the meanest employments, for the 
purpose of disarming suspicion and ensuring their 
escape* Young women, in many cases of gentle birth, 
who under other circumstances would have shrunk 
from the idea of walking a few miles from home, pre- 
pared to set out upon a journey on foot of some hun- 
dreds of miles, through woods, by unfrequented paths, 
across mountain-ranges, braving all dangers, so that 
they might but escape, though it were with their bare 
lives, from the soil of France. Jean Marteilhe, of Ber- 



* Women of quality, even sixty and 
seventy years of age, who had, so to 
speak, never placed a foot upon the 
ground except to cross their apart- 
ments or to stroll in an avenue, 
travelled a hundred leagues to some 
village which had been indicated ly a 
guide. Girls of fifteen, of every rank, 
exposed themselves to the same hazard. 
They drew wheelbarrows, they bore 
manure, panniers, and other burdens. 
They disfigured their faces with dyes 
to embrown their complexion, with 
ointments or juices that blistered their 
skins and gave them a wrinkled aspect. 
Women and girls were seen to counter- 



feit sickness, dumbness, and even in- 
sanity. Some went disguised as men ; 
and some, too delicate and small to 
pass as grown men, donned the dress 
of lacqueys, and followed on foot, 
through the mud, a guide on horse- 
back, who assumed the character of a 
man of importance. Many of these 
females reached Eotterdam in their 
borrowed garments, and hastening to 
the foot of the pulpit, before they had 
time to assume a more decent garb, 
published their repentance of their 
compulsory signature. — Elie Bexoit 
— Histoire de TEdit de Xantes, v. 554, 
953. 



CHAP. VIII. 



JEAN MARTEILHE. 



197 



gerac, describes a remarkable incident of this kind.* 
He had himself been taken prisoner in his attempt to 
escape across the French frontier near Marienbourg, 
and was lodged in the gaol at Tournay to wait his trial. 
While lying there, five other Huguenot fugitives, who 
had been captured by the dragoons, were ushered into 
his cell. Three of these he at once recognised, through 
their disguises, as gentlemen of Bergerac ; but the other 
two he failed to recognise. They eventually proved to 
be two young ladies, Mesdemoiselles Madras and Conceil 
of Bergerac, disguised as boys, who had set out, though 
it was winter, to make their escape from France through 
the forest of Ardennes. They had travelled thirty 
leagues on foot, under dripping trees, along broken 
roads, and by almost trackless paths, enduring cold, 
hunger, and privations, " with a firmness and con- 
stancy," says Marteilhe, " extraordinary for persons 
brought up in refinement, and who previous to this 
expedition would not have been able to walk a league." 
They were, however, captured and put in gaol; and 
when they recognised in their fellow-prisoners other 
Huguenot fugitives from Bergerac, they were so happy 
that they wept for joy. Marteilhe strongly urged that 

* The narrative of Jean Marteilhe, Oliver Goldsmith, under the fictitious 

entitled Memoires d'un Protestant con- name of "J. Willington," in the fol- 

damme aux Galeres de France pour lowing year ; Goldsmith receiving 

cause de Religion, ecrits par lui meme, twenty guineas for making the transla- 

gives a most interesting account of the tion. It has since been re-published by 

adventures and sufferings of those the Religious Tract Society, under the 

condemned to the galleys because of title of Autobiography of a French Pro- 

their Protestantism. The book origin- testant condemned to the Galleys for the 

ally appeared at Rotterdam in 1755, sake of his Religion, and is well worthy 

and was translated into English by of perusal. 



198 



RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



the gaoler should be informed of their sex, to which the 
young ladies assented, when they were removed to a sepa- 
rate cell. They were afterwards tried, and condemned 
to be immured in the Convent of the Kepentants at Paris, 
where they wept out the rest of their lives and died. 

Marteilhe himself refused all the tempting offers, as 
well as the dreadful threats, made to induce him to 
abjure his religion, and he was condemned to be sent 
to the galleys at seventeen years of age. Marched 
from gaol to gaol, and from town to town, loaded 
with chains like his fellow-prisoners, he was first 
placed in the galleys at Dunkirk, where he endured 
the most horrible hardships"' 5 " during twelve years; after 
which, on the surrender of Dunkirk to the English, he 
was marched, with twenty-two other Protestant galley- 
slaves, still loaded with chains, through Paris and the 
other principal towns, to Marseilles, to serve out the 
remainder of his sentence. There were other galley- 
slaves of even more tender years than Marteilhe. An- 
drew Bosquet was only sixteen, and he remained at 
the galleys twenty- six years. Francis Bourry and Mat- 
thew Morel were but fifteen ; and only a few years 
since, Admiral Baudin, maritime prefect at Toulon, in 
turning over the ancient records of his department, 
discovered the register of a child who had been sent to 
the galleys at twelve years of age " for having accom- 
panied his father and mother to the preaching !"f 

* What life at the galleys was may nase Coquerel fils, entitled Lcs Forcats 

be learnt from Marteilhe' s own narra- pour la Foi (Galley-slaves for the 

tive above cited, as well as from a Faith) recently published at Paris by 

highly interesting account of the Pro- Levy Brothers, 

testants sent to the galleys, by Atha- f Lcs Forcats pour la Foi, p. 91. 



chap. viii. JOHN HUBER A GALLEY-SLA VE. 



199 



On the other hand, age did not protect those found 
guilty of adhering to their faith. David de Caumont, 
baron of Montbelon, was seventy years old when sent 
to the galleys. Antoine Astruc was of the same 
age when condemned ; and Antoine Morlier seventy- 
one. Nor did distinction in learning protect the hap- 
less Protestant; for the celebrated counsellor of the 
king, Louis de Marolles, was sent to the galleys with 
the rest. At first, out of regard for his eminence, the 
gaoler chained him by only one foot ; but next day, 
by the express orders of Louis the Great, a heavy chain 
was fixed round his neck. It was while chained with 
all sorts of malefactors that Marolles compiled his 
Discourse on Providence, which was afterwards pub- 
lished and translated into English. Marolles was also 
a profound mathematician — the author of one of the 
best treatises on algebra ; and, while chained in his 
dungeon, he proposed a problem to the mathematicians 
of Paris which was afterwards inserted in the works of 
Ozanam. 

Another distinguished galley-slave was John Huber, 
father of three illustrious sons — Huber of the Birds, 
Huber of the Ants, and Huber of the Bees ! The 
following touching incident is from the elder Huber s 
journal: — "We arrived one night at a little town, 
chained, my wife and my children, with fourteen 
galley-slaves. The priests came to us, offering freedom 
on condition that we abjured. We had agreed to 
preserve a profound silence. After them came the 
women and the children of the place, who covered us 



200 



RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. vm. 



with mud. I made my little party fall on their knees, 
and we put up this prayer, in which all the fugi- 
tives joined — ' Gracious God, who seest the wrongs to 
which we are hourly exposed, give us strength to 
support them, and to forgive in charity those who 
wrong us. Strengthen us from good even unto better/ 
They had expected to hear complaints and outcries : 
our words astonished them. We finished our little 
act of worship by singing the hundred and sixteenth 
psalm. At this, the women began to weep. They 
washed off the mud with which our children's faces 
had been covered, and they sought permission to have 
us lodged in a barn separate from the other galley- 
slaves, which was done." 

To return to the fugitives who evaded the dra- 
goons, police, and coast-guard, and succeeded in making 
their escape from France. Many of them fled by sea, 
for it was difficult to close that great highway, or to 
guard the coast so strictly as to preclude the escape 
of those who dared to trust themselves upon it. Some 
of the fugitives from inland places, who had never 
seen the sea in their lives before, were so appalled at 
sight of the wide and stormy waste of waters, and so 
agonised by the thought of tearing themselves from 
their native land for ever, that their hearts sank within 
them, and they died in sheer despair, without being 
able to accomplish their purpose. Others, stronger 
and more courageous, prepared to brave all risks ; and 
on the first opportunity that offered, they put out to 
sea, from all parts of the coast, in open boats, in shal- 



chap. viii. THE LORD OF CASTELFRANC 



201 



lops, in fishing-smacks, and in trading-ships, eager to 
escape from France in anything that would float. 

" The Protestants of the sea-bord," says Weiss, " got away 
hi French, English, and Dutch merchant-vessels, whose masters 
hid them under bales of goods and heaps of coals, and in empty 
casks, where they had only the bunghole to breathe through. 
There they remained, crowded one upon another, until the ship 
sailed. Fear of discovery and of the galleys gave them courage 
to suffer. Persons brought up in every luxury, pregnant women, 
old men, invalids, and children, vied with each other in constancy 
to escape from their persecutors, often risking themselves in 
mere boats upon voyages the thought of which would in ordinary 
times have made them shudder. A Norman gentleman, Count 
de Marance, passed the Channel, in the depth of winter, with 
forty persons, amongst whom were several pregnant women, in a 
vessel of seven tons burthen. Overtaken by a storm, he re- 
mained long at sea, without provisions or hope of succour, dying 
of hunger ; he, the countess, and all the passengers reduced, for 
sole sustenance, to a little melted snow, with which they appeased 
their burning thirst, and moistened the parched lips of their 
weeping children, until they landed, half-dead, upon England's 
shores."* 

The lord of Castelfranc, near Eochelle, was less 
fortunate than the Count de Marance. He was cap- 
tured at sea, in an open boat, while attempting to 
escape to England with his wife and family. Three 
of his sons and three of his daughters thus taken were 
sent to the Caribee Islands as slaves. His three other 
daughters were detained in France in strict confine- 
ment; and after much suffering, during which they 
continued steadfast to their faith, they were at length 
permitted to depart for Geneva. The father contrived 

* Weiss— History of the French Protestant Refugees, pp. 79, 80. 



202 RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



in some way afterwards to escape from France and 
reach. London, where he lived for many years in Bun- 
hill Fields. The six slaves in the Caribee Islands were 
eventually liberated by the crew of an English vessel, 
and brought to London. The three young men entered 
the English army, under "William III. Two of them 
were killed in battle in Flanders, and the third retired 
on half-pay, settling at Portarlington in Ireland, where 
he died * 

Among the many who escaped in empty casks may 
be mentioned the Misses Eaboteau, of Pont-Gibaud, 
near Eochelle. Their relatives had become "new 
Catholics," by which name the converts from Pro- 
testantism, often pretended, were called ; but the 
two young ladies refused to be converted, and they 
waited an opportunity for making their escape from 
France. The means were at length provided by an 
exiled relative, John Charles Eaboteau, who had emi- 
grated long before, and settled as a wine-merchant in 
Dublin. He carried on a brisk trade with the French 
wine-growers, and occasionally sailed in his own ship 
to Eochelle, where he became the temporary guest of 
his relatives. At one of his visits the two young 
ladies confided to him that they had been sentenced 
to adopt the alternative of either marrying two Eoman 
Catholic gentlemen selected for their husbands, or 

* Agxew— Protestant Exiles from descendants of the French Protestant 

France [printed for private circula- refugees in England and Ireland. We 

tion], London 1866. — A work con- are glad to learn that the work is 

taining a large amount of curious and about to appear in a generally acces- 

interesting information relative to the sible form. 



CHAP. VIII. 



FUGITIVE GENTLEWOMEN. 



203 



being shut up in a convent for life. There was one 
other alternative — flight, — upon which they resolved, 
if their uncle would assist them. He at once assented, 
and made arrangements for their escape. Two horses 
were obtained, on which they rode by night to Eochelle, 
where lodgings had been takenfor them at the house 
of a widow. There was still, however, the greater diffi- 
culty to be overcome of getting the delicate freight 
put on board. Eaboteau had been accustomed to 
take to Ireland, as part of his cargo, several large 
casks of French apples ; and in two of such casks the 
young ladies were carried on board of his ship. They 
reached Dublin in safety, where they settled and mar- 
ried, and their descendants still survive* 

The Eev. Philip Skelton mentions the case of a 
French gentlewoman brought from Bordeaux to Ports- 
mouth by a sea captain of his acquaintance, which 
shows the agonies of mind which must have been en- 
dured by these noble women before they could bring 
themselves to fly alone across the sea to England for 
refuge. This lady had sold all the property she could 
convert into money, with which she purchased jewels, 
as being the easiest to carry. She contrived to get on 
board of the Englishman's ship by night, bringing 

* One of them married Alderman fiscated and sold as belonging to " Ke- 

Peter Barre, whose son was the famous ligionaires fugitifs du royaume pour 

Isaac Barre, M.P. and Privy Conn- cause de la religion. " Several of their 

cillor ; the other married Mr. Stephen descendants have filled important 

Chaigneau, descended from an an- offices in the state, army, and church 

eient family in the Charente, where of England and Ireland, 
their estate of Labelloniere was con- 



204 RENEWED FLIGHT QF HUGUENOTS, chap, vol 



with her the little casket of jewels — her sole fortune. 
She remained in a state of the greatest fear and anxiety- 
till the ship was under sail. But no sooner did she 
find herself fairly out at sea and the land disappearing 
in the distance, than she breathed freely, and began to 
give way to her feelings of joy and gratitude. This 
increased in proportion as she neared England, though 
about to land there an exile, a solitary woman, and a 
foreigner ; and no sooner did she reach the shore than 
she threw herself down and passionately kissed the 
ground, exclaiming — " Have I at last attained my 
wishes 1 Yes, gracious God ! I thank thee for this de- 
liverance from a tyranny exercised over my conscience, 
and for placing me where Thou alone art to reign over 
it by Thy word, till I shall finally lay down my head 
upon this beloved earth !"* 

All the measures adopted by the French king to 
prevent the escape of fugitives by sea proved as futile 
as those employed to prevent their escape by land. 
The coast-guard was increased, and more tempting 
rewards were offered for the capture of the flying Pro- 
testants. The royal cruisers were set to watch every 
harbour and inlet to prevent any vessel setting sail 
without a most rigid search of the cargo for concealed 
Huguenots. When it became known that many had 
escaped in empty casks, provision was made to meet 
the case ; and the royal order was issued that, before 
any ship was allowed to set sail for a foreign port, the 



* Philip Skelton [Rector of Fin- the French Protestant Refugees recom- 
tona, county Tyrone] — Compassion for mended, 1751. 



CHAP. VIII. 



THE LOSS TO FRANCE. 



205 



hold should be fumigated with deadly gas, so that any 
hidden Huguenot who could not be detected might 
thus be suffocated.* But this expedient was only of 
a piece with the refined and malignant cruelty of the 
Great Louis, and it failed like the rest ; for the Hugue- 
nots still continued to make their escape. 

It can never be known, with anything approaching 
to accuracy, how many persons fled from France in the 
great exodus. Vauban, the military engineer, writing 
only a few years after the Eevocation, said that 
"France had lost a hundred thousand inhabitants, 
sixty millions of money, nine thousand sailors, twelve 
thousand tried soldiers, six hundred officers, and its 
most flourishing manufactures." But the emigration 
was not then by any means at its height, and for many 
years after, the Huguenots continued to swarm out of 
France, and join their exiled compatriots in other 
lands. Sismondi computed the total number of emi- 
grants at from three to four hundred thousand ; and 
he was further of opinion that an equal number 
perished in prison, on the scaffold, at the galleys, and 
in their attempts to escape, t 

The emigration gave a death-blow to several great 
branches of French industry. Hundreds of manufac- 

* ' 1 On se seryait d'une composition + Bonlainvillers states that, under 

qui, lorsq'on y mettait le feu, devel- the interidancy of Lamoignon de Ba- 

loppait une odeur mortelle dans tous ville, a hundred thousand persons 

les recoins du navire, de sorte que, en were destroyed by premature death in 

la respirant, ceux qui s'etaient caches the single province of Languedoc, and 

trouvaient une mort certaine ! " — that one-tenth of them perished by 

Roter — Histoire de la Colonie Fran- fire, strangulation, or on the wheel. — 

qaise en Prusse, p. 153. De Felice, p. 340. 



206 



RENEWED FLIGHT OF HUGUENOTS, chap. viii. 



tories were closed, whole villages were depopulated, 
many large towns half-deserted, and a large extent of 
land went altogether out of cultivation. The skilled 
Dutch cloth-workers, whom Colbert had induced to 
settle at Abbeville, emigrated in a body, and the 
manufacture was extinguished. At Tours, where some 
40,000 persons had been employed in the silk-manu- 
facture, the number fell to little more than 4000 ; and 
instead of 8000 looms at work, there remained only 
about 100; while, of 800 mills, 730 were closed. Of 
the 400 tanneries which had before enriched Lorraine, 
Weiss says there remained but 54 in 1698. The 
population of Nantes, one of the most prosperous cities 
of France, was reduced from 80,000 to less than one- 
half; and a blow was struck at its prosperity from 
which it has not to this day recovered. 

The Ee vocation proved almost as fatal to the 
prosperity of Lyons as it did to that of Tours and 
Nantes. That city had originally been indebted for 
its silk-manufactures to the civil and religious wars of 
Sicily, Italy, and Spain, which occasioned numerous 
refugees from those countries to settle there and carry 
on their trade. And now, the same persecutions which 
had made the prosperity of Lyons threatened to prove 
its ruin. Of about 12,000 artizans employed in the 
silk-manufacture of Lyons, about 9000 fled into 
Switzerland and other countries. The industry of the 
place was for a time completely prostrated. More 
than a hundred years passed before it was restored to 
its former prosperity, and then only to suffer another 



chap. viii. PROSTRATION OF FRENCH INDUSTRY. 207 



equally staggering blow from the violence and outrage 
which accompanied the outbreak of the French Ee- 
volution. 

Without pursuing the subject of the sufferings of 
the Huguenots who remained in France, of whom 
there remained more than a million notwithstanding 
the frightful persecutions to which they continued to 
be subjected,* let us now follow the fugitives into the 
countries in which they found a refuge, and observe 
the important influence which they exercised, not only 
on their industrial prosperity, but also on their political 
history. 



* Although Protestantism seemed 
to he utterly stamped out in France 
during the century which followed 
the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes 
—although its ministers were ban- 
ished, its churches and schools sup- 
pressed, and it was placed entirely 
beyond the pale of the law — it 
nevertheless continued to have an 
active existence. Many of the ban- 
ished ministers from time to time 
returned secretly to minister to their 
flocks, and were seized and suffered 
death in consequence — as many as 
twenty-nine Protestant pastors hav- 
ing been hanged between 1684 and 
1762. During the same period, 
thousands of their followers were 
sent to the galleys, and died there. 
The names of 1546 of these illus- 
trious galley-slaves are given in For- 
mats pour la Foi, but the greater 
number have been long forgotten on 



earth. The principal offence for which 
they were sent to the galleys was 
attending the Protestant meetings 
which continued to be held ; for the 
Protestants, after the Eevocation, 
constituted a sort of underground 
church, regularly organised, though 
its meetings were held by night, in 
forests, in caves among the hills, or 
in unsuspected places even in the 
heart of large towns and cities, in all 
parts of France. The " Churches of 
the Desert," as they were called, con- 
tinued to exist down to the period of 
the French Revolution, when Protes- 
tantism in France was again allowed 
openly to show itself. A most in- 
teresting account of the Protestant 
church in France during this ' ' under- 
ground" period is to be found in 
Charles Coquerel's Histoire des 
Eglises du Desert, in 2 vols., Paris 
1841. 



CHAPTEK IX. 



THE HUGUENOTS AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 
OF 1688. 

The flight of the French Protestants exercised a highly- 
important influence on European politics. Among its 
other effects, it contributed to establish religious and 
political freedom in Switzerland, and to render it in a 
measure the Patmos of Europe ; it strengthened the 
foundations of liberty in the then comparatively insig- 
nificant electorate of Brandenburg, which has since 
become developed into the great monarchy of Prussia ; 
it fostered the strength and increased the political 
power and commercial wealth of the States of Holland ; 
and it materially contributed to the success of the 
English Eevolution of 1688, and to the establishment 
of the British Constitution on its present basis. 

Long before the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
the persecutions of the French Protestants had excited 
the general commiseration of Europe, and Switzer- 
land and the northern nations vied with each other in 
extending to them their sympathy and their help. 
The principal seats of Protestantism being in Langue- 
doc, Dauphiny, and the south-western provinces of 
France, the first emigrants readily passed across the 
frontier of the Jura and Savoy into Switzerland, mostly 



CHAP. IX. 



PROGRESS OF GENEVA. 



209 



making for the asylum of Geneva. That city had been 
in a measure created by the organisation of Calvin, 
who had striven to make it a sort of Christian Sparta, 
and in a great degree succeeded. Under his regimen 
the place had become entirely changed. It had already 
emancipated itself from the authority of the Duke of 
Savoy, and established alliances with adjoining cantons 
for the purpose of ensuring its independence, when 
Calvin undertook the administration of its ecclesiastical 
policy, to which the civil power shortly became entirely 
subordinate. There can be no doubt as to the rigour 
as well as the severity of Calvin s rule ; but Geneva 
was surrounded by ferocious enemies, and had to 
struggle for very life. The French historian Mignet 
has in a few words described the rapid progress made 
by this remarkable community : — 

" In less than half-a-century the face of Geneva had become 
entirely changed. It passed through three consecutive revolu- 
tions. The first delivered it from the Duke of Savoy, who lost 
his delegated authority in the attempt to convert it into an ab- 
solute sovereignty. The second introduced into Geneva the Ee- 
formed worship, by which the sovereignty of the bishop was 
destroyed. The third constituted the Protestant administration 
of Geneva, and the subordination to it of the civil power. The 
first of these revolutions gave Geneva its independence of the 
ducal power; the second, its moral regeneration and political 
sovereignty; the third, its greatness. These three revolutions 
did not only follow each other ; they were linked together. 
Switzerland was bent on liberty, the human mind on emancipa- 
tion. The liberty of Switzerland made the independence of 
Geneva, the emancipation of the human mind made its reforma- 
tion. These changes were not accomplished without difficulties, 
nor without wars. But if they troubled the peace of the city, if 



210 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



they agitated the people's hearts, if they divided families, if they 
occasioned imprisonments, if they caused blood to be shed in the 
streets, they tempered characters, they awoke minds, they puri- 
fied morals, they formed citizens and men, and Geneva issued 
transformed from the trials through which it passed. It had 
been subject, and it had grown independent ; it had been ig- 
norant, and it had become one of the lights of Europe ; it had 
been a little town, and it was now the Capital of a great Cause. 
Its science, its constitution, its greatness, were the work of 
France, through its exiles of the sixteenth century, who, unable 
to realise their ideas in their own country, had carried them into 
Switzerland, whose hospitality they repaid by giving them a new 
worship, and the spiritual government of many peoples." * 

Geneva having thus been established as a great 
Protestant asylum and stronghold, mainly through the 
labours of Frenchmen — Calvin, Farel, De Beza, D'Au- 
bigny, and many more — the fugitive Protestants natu- 
rally directed their steps thither in the first place. In 
1685, hundreds of them were arriving in Geneva daily; 



* Mignet — Memoir es Historiques, 
Paris, 1854, pp. 385-7- In one of his 
letters to the Duke of Savoy in 1594, 
Francis de Sales urged the speedy- 
suppression of Geneva as the capi- 
tal of heresy and Calvinism. "All 
the heretics," said he, "respect Ge- 
neva as the asylum of their religion : 
this very year a person came out of 
Languedoc to visit it as a Catholic 
might visit Eome. There is not a city 
in Europe which offers more facilities 
for the encouragement of heresy, for 
it is the gate of France, of Italy, and 
Germany, so that one finds there people 
of all nations — Italians, French, Ger- 
mans, Poles, Spaniards, English, and 
of countries still more remote. Besides, 
every one knows the great number of 



ministers bred there. Last year it 
furnished twenty to France ; even 
England obtains ministers from Ge- 
neva. "What shall I say of its mag- 
nificent printing establishments, by 
means of which the city floods the 
world with its wicked books, and 
even goes the length of distributing 
them at the public expense ? . . . 
All the enterprises undertaken against 
the Holy See and the Catholic princes 
have their beginning at Geneva. ~No 
city in Europe receives more apostates 
of all grades, secular and regular. 
From thence I conclude that Geneva 
being destroyed would necessarily lead 
to the dissipation of heresy." — Vie de 
Ste. Francois de Sales, par son neveu ; 
Lyons, 1633, pp. 120-1. 



CHAP. IX. 



REFUGEES IN SWITZERLAND. 



211 



but as the place was already crowded, and the accom- 
modation it provided was but limited, the greater 
number of the new arrivals travelled onward into the 
interior cantons. Two years later, the refugees were 
arriving in thousands, mostly from Dauphiny and 
Lyons ; the greater number of them being Protestant 
artizans. As the persecution began to rage in Gex, 
close upon the Swiss frontier, it seemed as if the whole 
population were flying. Geneva became so crowded 
with fugitives that they had to camp out in the public 
squares. 

The stream of emigrants was not less considerable 
at Basle, Zurich, Berne, and Lausanne. The ambassa- 
dor of Louis XIV. wrote to his royal master — " The 
fugitives continue to crowd to Zurich ; I met a number 
of them on the road from Basle to Soleure." A month 
later he informed his court that all the roads were 
full of French subjects making for Berne and Zurich ; 
and a third dispatch informed Louis that carts laden 
with fugitives were daily passing through the streets 
of Basle. As the fugitives were mostly destitute, the 
Protestant cantons provided a fund* to facilitate the 



* The city of Geneva was superbly 
bountiful. In 1685, the citizens con- 
tributed 88,161 florins to the Pro- 
testant refugee fund. As the emigra- 
tion increased, so did their bounty, 
until, in 1707, they contributed as 
much as 234,672 florins towards the 
expenses of the emigration. " Within 
a period of forty years," says Graverol, 
in his History of the City of Nismes 
(London, 1703), "Geneva furnished 



official contributions towards the as- 
sistance of the refugees of the Edict of 
Nantes, amounting to not less than 
5,143,266 florins." The sums ex- 
pended by the cantons of Berne and 
Vaud during the same period exceeded 
4,000,000 florins. This expenditure 
was altogether exclusive of the indi- 
vidual contributions and private hospi- 
tality of the Swiss people, which were 
alike liberal and bountiful. 



212 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



transit of those whom the country was unable to main- 
tain. And thus 15,591 persons were forwarded to 
Germany at the expense of the League. 

Louis XIV. beheld with vexation the departure of 
so large a portion of his subjects, who perf erred flight 
with destitution rather than French citizenship with 
" conversion f and he determined to interpose with a 
strong hand, so as, if possible, to prevent their further 
emigration. Accordingly, when the people of Gex went 
flying into Geneva in crowds, Louis called upon the 
magistrates at once to expel them. The republican 
city was then comparatively small and unarmed, and 
unable to resist the will of a monarch so powerful and 
with such long arms as Louis. The magistrates, there- 
fore, made a show of compliance with his orders, and 
directed the expulsion of the fugitives by sound of 
trumpet. The exiles left by the French gate in a long 
and sad procession ; but at midnight the citizens went 
forth and led them round the walls, bringing them into 
Geneva again by the Swiss gate. On this proceeding 
being reported to him, Louis vowed vengeance upon 
Geneva for thus trifling with his express orders, and 
giving refuge to his contumacious subjects. But Berne 
and Zurich having hastened to proffer their support to 
Geneva, the French king's threats remained unexecuted. 
The refugees, accordingly, remained in Switzerland, 
and settled in the various Protestant cantons, where 
they founded many important branches of industry, 
which continue to flourish to this day. 

The Protestant refugees received a like cordial wel- 



CHAP. IX. 



REFUGEES IN PRUSSIA 



213 



come in the provinces of North Germany, where they 
succeeded in establishing many important and highly 
flourishing colonies. The province of Brandenburg, 
which formed the nucleus of modern Prussia, had been 
devastated and almost ruined by the Thirty Years' 
War. Its trade and manufactures were destroyed, and 
much of its soil lay uncultivated. The elector Fre- 
derick William was desirous of restoring its popula- 
tion ; and, with that view, he sought to attract into it 
men of skill and industry from all quarters. The Pro- 
testants whom the king of France was driving out of 
his kingdom were precisely the men whom the elector 
desired for subjects ; and he sent repeated invitations 
to the persecuted Huguenots to settle in Brandenburg, 
with the promise of liberty of worship, protection, and 
hospitality. As early as 1661, numerous refugees em- 
braced his offer, and settled in Berlin, where they 
prospered, increased, and eventually founded a flourish- 
ing French church. 

The Kevocation of the Edict of Nantes furnished 
the elector with an opportunity for renewing his invi- 
tation with greater effect than before ; and the promul- 
gation of the Edict of Paris was almost immediately 
followed by the promulgation of the Edict of Potsdam. 
By the latter edict, men of the reformed religion, driven 
out of France for conscience' sake, were offered a free 
and safe retreat through all the dominions of the elec- 
tor, and promised rights, franchises, and other advan- 
tages, on their settlement in Brandenburg, " in order 
to relieve them, and in some sort to make amends for 



214 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



the calamities with which Providence has thought fit 
to visit so considerable a part of His church."* Facili- 
ties were provided to enable the emigrants from France 
to reach the Prussian States. Those from the southern 
and eastern provinces of France were directed to make 
for the Khine, and thence to find their way by boats 
to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, or to Cleves, where the 
Prussian authorities awaited them with subsidies and 
the means of travelling eastward. Free shipping was 
also provided for them at Amsterdam, from whence 
they were to proceed to Hamburg, where the Prussian 
resident was directed to assist them in reaching their 
intended destinations. 

These measures shortly had the effect of attracting 
large numbers of Huguenots into the northern provinces 
of Germany. The city of Frankfort became crowded 
with those arriving from the eastern provinces of France. 
The fugitives were everywhere made welcome, taken by 
the hand, succoured and helped. The elector assisted 
them with money out of his own private means. " I 
will sell my plate," he said, " rather than they should 
lack assistance." 

On arriving in Brandenburg, the emigrants pro- 
ceeded to establish their colonies throughout the elec- 
torate. Nearly every large town in Prussia had its 
French church, and one or more French pastors. The 
celebrated Ancillon was pastor of the church at Berlin; 
and many of the Protestant gentry resorted thither, 
attracted by his reputation. The Huguenot immigra- 

* Weiss — History of the French Protestant Refugees, p. 100. 



CHAP. I3T. 



REFUGEES IN AFRICA. 



215 



tion into Prussia consisted of soldiers, gentlemen, men 
of letters and artists, traders, manufacturers, and 
labourers. " All received assistance," says Weiss, " in 
money, employments, and privileges : and they contri- 
buted, in their turn, in a proportion very superior 
to their number, to the greatness of their adopted 
country/'* 

Numerous other bodies of the refugees settled in 
the smaller states of Germany, in Denmark, in Sweden, 
and even in Eussia. A considerable body of them 
crossed the Atlantic and settled in the United States 
of America; others, led by a nephew of Admiral 
Duquesne, emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope;f 
while a colony settled as remote from France as 



* The personal history and parti- 
culars of the refugees who settled in 
Prussia are given at full length in the 
work published at Berlin, in 9 vols. 
8vo, by Messrs. Erman and Reclam, 
entitled Memoires pour servir a VHis- 
toire des Eeficgies Francois dans les 
Mats du Roi. 

f According to Weiss (book v. 
chap. 5), there are now in Cape 
Colony some 4000 descendants of 
Huguenot refugees, residing in French 
Valley. In 1739, the Dutch govern- 
ment proscribed the French language, 
and their language is therefore now 
Dutch ; but they continue to be 
known by their surnames (such as 
Cocher, Dutoit, Malherbe, Retif), by 
their personal; appearance, and by 
their religious habits. On each par- 
lour table is one of those great folio 
Bibles which the French Protestants 
were wont to hand down from father 



to son, and in which the dates of 
birth and the names of all the mem- 
bers of the family are invariably in- 
scribed. Clement Marot's Psalms and 
religious books are often to be found 
amongst them. Night and morning 
the members of each family assemble 
for prayer and the reading of the 
Bible. Every Sunday at sunrise the 
farmers set out in their rustic vehicles, 
covered with hides or with coarse 
cloth, to attend divine service, and 
at night they return to their peaceful 
homes. The news of the world takes 
a long time to reach them. In 1828, 
when evangelical missionaries told 
them that religious toleration had 
existed in France for forty years, the 
old men shed tears, and long refused 
to believe that their brethren could 
be so favourably treated in a country 
from which their ancestors had been 
so cruelly expelled. 



216 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



Surinam in Dutch Guiana. But Holland and Eng- 
land constituted the principal asylums of the exiled 
Huguenots — Holland in the first instance, and England 
in the next ; many of them passing from the one 
country to the other in the course of the great political 
movements which followed close upon the Eevocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. 

Holland had long been a refuge for the persecuted 
Protestants of Europe. During the religious troubles 
of the sixteenth century, exiles fled to it from all 
quarters — from Germany, Flanders, France, and Eng- 
land. During the reign of Queen Mary thirty thou- 
sand English Protestants fled thither, who for the most 
part returned to England on the accession of Elizabeth. 
There were colonies of foreign exiles settled in nearly 
all the United Provinces — of Germans in Friesland and 
Guelderland, and of Walloons in Amsterdam, Haerlem, 
Leyden, Delft, and other towns in North and South 
Holland. And now these refugees were joined by a 
still greater influx of persecuted Protestants from all 
parts of France. Bayle designated Holland "the 
great ark of the fugitives." It became the chief 
European centre of free thought, free religion, and free 
industry. A healthy spirit of liberty pervaded it, 
which awakened and cultivated the best activities and 
energies of its people. 

The ablest minds of France, proscribed by Louis 
XIV., took refuge in the Low Countries, where they 
taught from professors' chairs, preached from pulpits, 
and spoke to all Europe through the medium of the 



CHAP. IX. 



THE ASYLUM IN HOLLAND. 



217 



printing-press. Descartes, driven from France, betook 
himself to Holland, where he spent twenty years,* and 
published his principal philosophical works. It was the 
retreat of Bayle, Huyghens, Jurieu, and many more of 
the best men of France, who there uttered and printed 
freely what they could do nowhere else. Among the 
most stirring books which emanated from the French 
press in Holland were those of Jurieu — formerly profes- 
sor of theology and Hebrew in the university of Sedan — 
who now sought to rouse the indignation of Europe 
against the tyranny of Louis XI Y. His writings were 
not permitted to pass into France, where all works 
hostile to the king and the Jesuits were seized and 
burnt; but they spread over northern Europe, and 
fanned the general indignation into a fiercer flame. 

Among the celebrated French Protestant divines 
who took refuge in Holland, were Claude, Basnage, 
Martin, Benoit, and Saurin. Academies were ex- 
pressly established at Leyden, Eotterdam, and Utrecht, 
in which the more distinguished of the banished 
ministers were appointed to professors' chairs, while 
others were distributed throughout the principal towns 
and placed in charge of Protestant churches. A fund 
was raised by voluntary subscription for the relief of 
the fugitives, to which all parties cheerfully and liber- 
ally contributed — not only Lutherans and Calvinists, 
but Jews, and even Eoman Catholics. 

The public, as well as the private hospitality of 



* He died in 1650 at Stockholm, on the express invitation of Christina, 
whither he had proceeded and settled queen of Sweden. 



218 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap, ix 



Holland towards the fugitives was indeed splendid. 
The magistrates of Amsterdam not only freely con- 
ferred on them the rights of citizenship, with liberty 
to exercise their respective callings, but granted them 
exemption from local taxes for three years. The States 
of Holland and the province of Friesland granted them 
similar privileges, with an exemption from all imposts 
for a period of twelve years. Every encouragement 
was given to the immigration. Not a town but was 
ready to welcome and help the destitute foreigners. 
The people received them into their houses as guests, 
and when the private dwellings were filled, public 
establishments were opened for their accommodation. 
All this was not enough. The Dutch, hearing of the 
sufferings of the poor exiles in Switzerland, sent invita- 
tions to them to come into Holland, where they held 
out that there was room for all. 

The result was an immense increase of the emigration 
from France into Holland, of men of all ranks — arti- 
zans, cloth-makers, silk- weavers, glass-makers, printers, 
and manufacturers. They were distributed, on their 
arrival, throughout the various towns and cities, where 
they settled to the pursuit of their respective callings ; 
and in course of a short time they more than re- 
paid, by the exercise of their industry and their skill, 
the splendid hospitality of their benefactors. 

Another important feature of the immigration into 
Holland remains to be mentioned. This was the in- 
flux of a large number of the best sailors of France, from 
the coasts of Guienne, Saintonge, La Kochelle, Poitou, 



CHAP. IX. 



WILLIAM OF ORANGE. 



219 



and Normandy, together with a still larger number of 
veteran officers and soldiers of the French army. This 
accession of refugees had the effect of greatly adding 
-to the strength both of the Dutch navy and army ; 
and, as we shall hereafter find, exercised a most im- 
portant influence on the political history both of 
Holland and England. 

Louis XIV. endeavoured to check the emigration 
of his subjects into Holland, as he had tried to stop 
their flight into Switzerland and England, but in vain. 
His envoy expostulated against their reception by the 
States ; and the States reiterated their proclamations 
of privileges to the refugees. It came to be feared 
that Louis would declare war against Holland ; but 
the Prince of Orange had once before arrested the 
progress of Louis, in his invasion of the provinces 
in 1672, and he longed for nothing so much as for 
another encounter with the French tyrant. 

William, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of Hol- 
land, hated France as his grandfather had hated Spain. 
Under an appearance of physical weakness and phleg- 
matic indifference, he concealed an ardent mind and 
an indomitable will. He was cool and taciturn, yet 
full of courage and even daring. He was one of those 
rare men who never know despair. When the great 
French army of 100,000 men, under Conde and Tu- 
renne, swept over Flanders in 1 6 72, capturing city after 
city, and approached Amsterdam, the inhabitants be- 
came filled with dread. De Witt proposed submission; 
but William, then only twenty-two years of age, urged 



220 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. 



CHAP. IX. 



resistance, and his view was supported by the people. 
He declared that he would die in the last ditch rather 
than see the ruin of his country, and, true to his word, he 
ordered the dykes to be cut and the country laid under 
water. The independence of Holland was thus saved, 
but at a frightful cost ; and William never forgot, 
perhaps never forgave, the injury which Louis thereby 
caused him to inflict upon Holland. 

William had another and more personal cause of 
quarrel with Louis. The Prince took his title from 
the small but independent principality of Orange, 
situated in the south-east of France, a little to the 
north of Avignon. Though Orange was a fief of the 
imperial and not of the French crown, Louis, disre- 
garding public law, overran it, dismantled the fortifica- 
tions of the principal town, and subjected the Pro- 
testants of the district to the same cruelties which he 
practised upon his own subjects of that faith. On 
being informed of these outrages, William declared 
aloud at his table that the Most Christian King 
" should be made to know one day what it was to have 
offended a Prince of Orange." Louis' ambassador at 
the Hague having questioned the Prince as to the 
meaning of the words, the latter positively refused 
either to retract or explain them. 

i It may not be unimportant to remark that William 
was, like the other princes of his race, an intense Pro- 
testant. The history of his family was identified with 
the rise and progress of the new views, as well as with 
the emancipation of the United Provinces from the 



chap. ix. WILLIAM AND THE STUARTS. 221 



yoke of Spain and the Inquisition. His grandfather 
had fallen a victim to the dagger of Gerard, the agent 
of the Jesuits, and expired in the arms of his wife, 
who was a daughter of Admiral Coligny, the renowned 
victim of Saint Bartholomew. Thus the best Huguenot 
blood flowed in the veins of the young Prince of 
Orarjge ; and his sympathies were wholly on the side 
of the fugitives who sought the asylum of Holland 
against the cruelty of their persecutor. 

At the same time, William was doubly related 
to the English royal family. His mother was the 
daughter of Charles I., and his wife was the daughter 
of James II., then reigning king of England. James 
being then without male issue, the Princess of Orange 
was thus the heiress-presumptive to the British throne. 
Though William may have been ambitious, he was 
cautious and sagacious, and probably had not the re- 
motest idea of anticipating the succession of his wife 
by the overthrow of the government of his father-in- 
law, but for the circumstance about to be summarily 
described, and which issued in the revolution of 1688. 

Although the later Stuart kings, who were Eoman 
Catholics more or less disguised, had no love for 
Protestantism, they nevertheless felt themselves under 
the necessity of continuing the policy initiated by 
Queen Elizabeth, of giving a free asylum in England 
to the persecuted French Huguenots. In 1681, 
Charles II. was constrained by public opinion to 
sanction a bill granting large privileges to such of the 
refugees as should land on our shores. They were to 



222 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



have free letters-patent granted them ; and on their 
arrival at any of the out-ports, their baggage and stock- 
in-trade — when they had any — were to be landed duty 
free. But the greater number arrived destitute. For 
example, a newspaper of the day thus announced the 
landing of a body of the refugees at Plymouth : — 

"Plymouth, 6th September 1681. — Au open boat arrived 
here yesterday, in which were forty or fifty Protestants who re- 
sided outside La Kochelle. Four other boats left with this, one 
of which is said to have put into Dartmouth, but it is not yet 
known what became of the other three." 

Large numbers of the fugitives continued to land 
at all the southern ports — at Dover, at Eye, at South- 
ampton, Dartmouth, and Plymouth ; and, wherever 
they landed, they received a cordial welcome. Many 
w x ere pastors, who came ashore hungering and in rags, 
lamenting the flocks, and some the wives and child- 
ren, they had left behind them in France. The 
people crowded round the venerable sufferers with in- 
dignant and pitying hearts ; they received them into 
their dwellings, and hospitably relieved their wants. 
Very soon, the flocks followed in the wake of their 
pastors ; and the landings of the refugees continued 
for many years, during which they crowded all the 
southern ports. The local clergy led and directed the 
hospitality of the inhabitants ; and they usually placed 
the parish church at their disposal during a part of 
each Sunday, until they could be provided with special 
accommodation of their own.* 



* At Eye, the refugees were granted eight to ten in the morning, and from 
the use of the parish church from twelve to two in the afternoon — the 



CHAP. IX. 



JAMES II. OF ENGLAND. 



223 



The sight of so much distress borne so patiently 
and uncomplainingly, deeply stirred the heart of the 
nation ; and every effort was made to succour and help 
the poor exiles for conscience' sake. Public collections 
were made in the churches, and a fund was raised for 
the relief of the most necessitous, and for enabling 
the foreigners to proceed inland to places where they 
could pursue their industry. Many were thus forward- 
ed from the sea-coast to London, Canterbury, Norwich, 
and other places, where they eventually formed pros- 
perous settlements, and laid the foundations of im- 
portant branches of industry. 

Meanwhile, James II. succeeded to the British 
throne at the death of his brother- Charles II., on the 
6th of January 1685 — the year memorable in France 
as that in which the Edict of Nantes was revoked. 
Charles and James were both Koman Catholics — 
Charles when he was not a scoffer, James always. 
The latter had long been a friend of the Jesuits in 



appropriation being duly confirmed 
by the Council of State. Reports 
having been spread abroad, that the 
fugitives were persons of bad character, 
disaffected, and Papists in disguise, 
the vicar and principal inhabitants of 
Rye drew up and published the fol- 
lowing testimonial in their behalf : — 
' ' These are to certifie to all whom 
it may concern, that the French Pro- 
testants that are settled inhabitants 
of this town of Rye, are a sober, harm- 
less, innocent people, such as serve 
God constantly and uniformly, ac- 
cording to the usage and custom of 



the Church of England. And fur- 
ther, that we believe them to be 
falsely aspersed for Papists and dis- 
affected persons, no such thing ap- 
pearing unto us by the conversations 
of any of them. This we do freely 
and truly certifie for and of them. In 
witness whereof, we have hereunto set 
our hands the 18th day of April 1682. 
Wm. Williams, vicar; Thos. Tour- 
nay," etc. etc. — State Papers, Domes- 
tic Calendar, 1682, No. 65. See also 
Sussex Archaeological Collection, xiii. 
201. 



224 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



disguise ; but no sooner was lie king than lie threw 
off the mask, and exhibited himself in his true 
character. James was not a man to gather wisdom 
from experience. During the exile of his family 
he had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing; and 
it shortly became clear to the English nation that 
he was bent on pursuing almost the identical 
course which had cost his father his crown and his 
head. 

If there was one feeling that characterised the 
English people about this time more than another, it 
was their aversion to popery — not merely popery as a 
religion, but as a policy. It was felt to be contrary to 
the whole spirit, character, and tendency of the nation. 
Popery had so repeatedly exhibited itself as a perse- 
cuting policy, that not only the religious but the non- 
religious, not only the intelligent few but the illiterate 
many, regarded it with feelings of deep aversion. Great, 
therefore, was the public indignation when it became 
known that one of the first acts of James, on his accession 
to the throne, was to order the public celebration of the 
Mass at Westminster, after an interval of more than a 
century. The king also dismissed from about his 
person clergymen of the English Church, and intro- 
duced well-known Jesuits in their stead. He degraded 
several of the bishops, though he did not yet venture 
openly to persecute them. But he showed his temper 
and his tendency by actively reviving the persecutions 
of the Scotch Presbyterians, whom he pursued with a 



chap. ix. JAMES II. AND LOUIS XIV. 



225 



cruelty only equalled by Louis XIV. in his dealings 
with the Huguenots.* 

James II. was but the too ready learner of the 
lessons in despotism taught him by Louis XIV. whose 
pensioner! he was, and whose ultimate victim he 
proved to be. The two men indeed resembled each 
other in many respects, and their actions ran in almost 
parallel lines ; though those who concede to Louis the 
title of "Great," will probably object that the English 
king was merely the ape of the French one.J They 
were both dissolute, and both bigots, vibrating alter- 
nately between their mistresses and their confessors. 
What La Valliere, Montespan, and Maintenon were to 
Louis XIY., that Arabella Churchill and Catherine 
Sedley were to James II., while the queens of both 
were left to pine in sorrow and neglect. The principal 

* In Scotland, whoever was de- England should he dependent, not on 

tected preaching in a conventicle or his own people, hut on the friendship 

attending one was punishable with of the king of France alone." Louis 

death and the confiscation of all his had already anticipated the wishes of 

property. Macaulay says the Scotch James hy remitting to him hills of 

Actof Parliament (James VII. 8th May exchange equal to £37,500 sterling. 

1685) enacting these penalties was James shed tears of joy on receiving 

passed at the special instance of the them. In the course of a few weeks 

king. Barillon obtained a further remittance 

t James II. was from the first the from France of about £12,000 sterling, 

pensioner of Louis XIV. One of his and he was instructed to furnish the 

first acts, on the death of Charles, was English government with the money 

to supplicate Barillon, the representa- for the purpose of corrupting members 

tive of Louis at the English Court, for of the new House of Commons. — See 

money. Rochester, James' prime Macaulay's History of England, ed. 

minister, said to Barillon — " The 1849, pp. 458, 463. 
money will be well laid out ; your % Thus James aped Louis even in 

master cannot employ his revenues his worship, introducing four-and- 

better. Represent to him strongly twenty fiddlers in his church- choir 

how important it is that the king of after the French king's model. 



226 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. 



CHAP. IX 



difference between them in this respect was, that 
Louis sinned with comely mistresses, and James with 
ugly ones.* Louis sought absolution from Pere la 
Chaise, as James from Father Petre ; and when 
penance had to be done, both laid it alike upon their 
Protestant subjects — Louis increasing the pressure of 
persecution on the Huguenots, and James upon the 
Puritans and Covenanters. Both employed military 
missionaries in carrying out their designs of conver- 
sion ; the agents of Louis being the " dragons " of 
Noailles, those of James the dragoons of Claverhouse. 
Both were despisers of constitutional power, and sought 
to centre the government in themselves. But while 
Louis succeeded in crushing the Huguenots, James ig- 
nominiously failed in crushing the Puritans. Louis, 
it is true, brought France to the verge of ruin, and 
paved the way for the French Eevolution of 1792; 
while, happily for England, the designs of James were 
summarily thwarted by the English Eevolution of 
1688, and the ruin of his kingdom was thus averted. 

The designs of James upon the consciences of his 
people were not long in developing themselves. The 
persecution of the Scotch Covenanters was carried on 
with increased virulence, until resistance almost dis- 
appeared; and then he turned his attention to the 
English Puritans. Baxter, Howe, Bunyan, and hun- 

* Charles II. used to say that one dered what James chose them for. 

might fancy his brother's mistresses " We were none of us handsome, " she 

were given to him by his father con- said, " and if we had wit, he had not 

fessor as penances, they were all so enough to find it out." 
ugly. Catherine Sedley herself won- 



chap. ix. DESPOTIC MEASURES OF JAMES II. 227 



dreds of nonconformist ministers were thrown into 
gaol ; but there were as yet no hangings and shootings 
of them as in Scotland. To strengthen his power, and 
enable him to adopt more decisive measures, James 
next took steps to augment the standing army — a 
measure which exposed him to increased public odium. 
Though contrary to law, he in many cases dismissed 
the Protestant officers of regiments, and appointed 
Koman Catholics in their stead. To render the ap- 
pointments legal, he proposed to repeal the Test Act, 
as well as the Habeas Corpus Act ; but his minister 
Halifax refusing to concur in this course, he was dis- 
missed, and Parliament was adjourned. Immediately 
before its re-assembling, came the news from France of 
the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes and the horrible 
cruelties perpetrated on the Huguenots. The intelli- 
gence caused a thrill of indignation to run throughout 
England; and very shortly, crowds of the destitute 
fugitives landed on the southern coast, and spread 
abroad the tale of horror. 

Shortly after, there came from France the report of a 
speech addressed by the Bishop of Valance to Louis XIV. 
in the name of the French clergy. " The pious sove- 
reign of England," said the orator, " looked to the Most 
Christian King, the eldest son of the Church, for sup- 
port against a heretical nation." The natural inference 
drawn was, that what Louis had done in France James 
was about to imitate in England by means of his new 
standing army, commanded by Roman Catholic officers. 

To allay the general alarm which began to prevail, 



228 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. 



CHAP. IX. 



James pretended to disapprove of the cruelties to 
which the Huguenots had been subjected; and, in de- 
ference to public opinion, he granted some relief to the 
exiles from his privy purse, and invited his subjects to 
imitate his liberality, by making a public collection for 
them in the churches throughout the kino-dom. His 
acts, however, speedily belied his words. At the insti- 
gation of Barillon, he had the book published in Hol- 
land by the banished Huguenot pastor Claude, describing 
the sufferings of his brethren, burnt by the hangman 
before the Eoyal Exchange ; and when the public col- 
lection was made in the churches, and £40,000 was 
paid into the chamber of London, James gave orders that 
none should receive a farthing of relief unless they first 
took the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual. 
Many of the exiles who came for help, when they 
heard of the terms on which alone it was to be granted, 
went away, unrelieved, with sad and sorrowful hearts. 

James proceeded steadily on his reactionary course. 
He ordered warrants to be drawn, in defiance of the 
law, authorising priests of the Church of Eome to hold 
benefices in the Church of England; and various 
appointments were made in conformity with his royal 
will. A Jesuit was quartered as chaplain in Univer- 
sity College, Oxford ; and the Eoman Catholic rites 
were there publicly celebrated. The deanery of Christ- 
church was presented to a minister of the Church of 
Kome, and mass was duly celebrated there. Eoman 
Catholic chapels and convents rose all over the country ; 
and Franciscan, Carmelite, and Benedictine monks 



CHAP. IX. 



THE ENGLISH CRISIS. 



229 



appeared openly, in their cowls, beads, and conventual 
garb. The king made no secret of his intention to 
destroy the Protestant Church ; and he lost no time in 
carrying out his measures, even in the face of popular 
tumult and occasional rioting, — placing his reliance 
mainly upon his standing army, which was then 
encamped on Hounslow Heath. At the same time 
Tyrconnel was sent over to Ireland to root out the 
Protestant colonies there, and one of his first acts was 
to cast adrift about 4000 Protestant officers and soldiers, 
supplanting them by as many staunch Papists. Those 
in his confidence boasted that in a few months there 
would not be a man of English race left in the Irish 
army. The Irish Protestants, indeed, began to fear 
another massacre^ and a number of families, principally 
gentlemen, artificers, and tradesmen, left Dublin for 
England in the course of a few days. 

At length resistance began to show itself. The 
Parliaments both of England and Scotland pronounced 
against the king's policy, and he was unable to carry 
his measures by constitutional methods. He accord- 
ingly resolved, like Louis XIV., to rule by the strong 
hand, and to govern by royal edict. Such was the 
state of affairs, rapidly verging on anarchy or civil 
war, when the English nation, sick of the rule of 
James II., after a reign of only three years, and long- 
ing for relief, looked abroad for help ; and, with almost 
general consent, fixed their eyes upon William, Prince 
of Orange, as the one man capable of assisting them in 
their time of need. 



230 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. 



CHAP. IX. 



The Prince of Orange had meanwhile been dili- 
gently occupied, amongst other things, with the re- 
organisation of his army; and the influx of veteran 
officers and soldiers of the French king, banished from 
France because of their religion, furnished him with 
every facility for this purpose. He proposed to the 
States of Holland that they should raise two new regi- 
ments, to be composed entirely of Huguenots ; but 
the States were at first unwilling to make such an 
addition to their army. They feared the warlike de- 
signs of their young prince, and were mainly intent 
on reducing the heavy imposts that weighed upon 
the country, occasioned by the recent invasion of 
Louis XIV., from the destructive effects of which they 
were still suffering. 

William, fearing lest the veterans whom he so 
anxiously desired to retain in his service should de- 
part into other lands, then publicly proclaimed that 
he would himself pay the expenses of all the military 
refugees rather than that they should leave Holland. 
On this the States hesitated no longer, but agreed to 
pension the French officers until they could be incor- 
porated in the Dutch army, and 180,000 florins a-year 
were voted for the purpose. Companies of French 
cadets were also formed and maintained at the ex- 
pense of the state. The Huguenot officers and men 
were drafted as rapidly as possible into the Dutch 
army ; and before long William saw his ranks swelled 
by a formidable body of veteran troops, together with 
a large number of officers of fusiliers from Strasburg, 



chap. ix. EXPEDITIOX TO EXGLAXD. 



231 



Metz, and Verdun. Whole companies of Huguenot 
troops -were drafted into eaeli regiment under their 
own officers ; while the principal fortresses at Breda, 
Maestricht, Bergen-op-Zooni, Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen, Ni- 
muegen, Arnheim, and Utrecht, were used as so many 
depots for such officers and soldiers as continued to 
take refuge in Holland. 

William's plans were so carefully prepared, and 
he conducted his proceedings with such impenetrable 
mystery, that both James II. and Louis XI Y. were 
kept entirely in the dark as to his plans and intentions. 
At leuolh the Prince was ready to embark his army, 
and England was ready to receive him. It forms no 
part of our purpose to relate the circumstances con- 
nected with the embarkation of William, his landing 
in England, and the revolution which followed, further 
than to illustrate the part which the banished Hugue- 
nots played in that great political transaction. The 
narrative will be found brilliantly narrated in the 
pages of Macaulay, though that historian passes over 
with too slight notice the services of the Huguenots. 

Michelet, the French writer, observes with justice : 
"The army of William was strong precisely in that 
Calvinistic element which James repudiated in England 
— I mean in our Huguenot soldiers, the brothers of the 
Puritans. I am astonished that Maeaulay has thought 

J o 

fit to leave this circumstance in the background. I 
cannot believe that o-reat England, with all her olories 

o o y o 

and her inheritance of liberty, is unwilling nobly to 
avow the part which we Frenchmen had in her deliver- 



232 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



ance. In the Homeric enumeration which the historian 
gives of the followers of William, he reckons up Eng- 
lish, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Swiss, with the pictur- 
esque detail of their arms, uniforms, and all, down even 
to the two hundred negroes with their black faces set 
off by embroidered turbans and white feathers who 
followed the body of English gentry led by the Earl 
of Macclesfield. But he did not see our Frenchmen. 
Apparently the proscribed Huguenot soldiers who fol- 
lowed William did not do honour to the Prince by 
their clothes ! Doubtless many of them wore the 
dress in which they had fled from France — and it had 
become dusty, worn, and tattered."* 

There is indeed little reason to doubt, notwith- 
standing Macaulay's oversight, that the flower of the 
little army with which William landed at Torbay, on 
the 15th of November 1688, consisted of Huguenot 
soldiers trained under Schomberg, Turenne, and Conde. 
The expedition included three entire regiments of 
French infantry numbering 2250 men, and a complete 
squadron of French cavalry. These were nearly all 
veteran troops, officers and men, whose valour had 
been proved on many a hard-fought field. Many of 
them were gentlemen born, who, unable to obtain 
commissions as officers, were content to serve in 
the ranks. The number of French officers was 
very large in proportion to the whole force, — 736, 
besides those in command of the French regiments, 
being distributed through all the battalions. It is, 

* Michelet — Louis XIV. et la Revocation, pp. 418-9. 



chap. ix. THE HUGUEXOT COXTIXGEXT. 



233 



moreover, worthy of note that William's ablest and 
most misted officers were Husmenots. Schomberg. 
the refugee marshal of France, was next in command 
to the Prince himself: and such was the confidence 
which that skilful general inspired, that the Princess 
of Orange gave him secret instructions to assert her 
rights, and carry out the enterprise, should her hus- 
band fall* William's three aides-de-camp, De TEtang, 
De la Meloniere, and the Marquis d'Arzilliers, were 
French officers, as were also the chiefs of the engineers 
and the artillery, Gambon and Gordon, the latter 
being one of Vauban's most distinguished pupils. 
Fifty-four French gentlemen served in Williams regi- 
ment of horse-guards, and thirty-four in his body- 
guard. Among the officers of the army of liberation, 
distinguished alike by their birth and their military 
skill, were the cavalry officers Didier de Boncourt 
and Chalant de Eemeugnac, colonels ; Danserville, 
lieutenant-colonel : and Petit and Picard, majors ; 
while others of equal birth and distinction as soldiers, 
served in the infantry. j 

Marshal Schomberg was descended from the old 
Dukes of Cleves, whose arms he bore ; and several of his 



* Weiss— History of the French 
Protestant Refugees, p. 232. 

t Weiss mentions among the cap- 
tains of horse, Massole de Montant, 
Petit, De Maricourt, De Boncourt, De 
Fabrice, De Lauray, Baron d'En- 
tragues, Le Coq de St. Leger, De Sau- 
maise, De Lacrob:, De Dampierre ; 



while among the captains of infantry 
we find De Saint Saureur, Eapin 
(afterwards the historian), De Cosne- 
Chavernay, Danseryille, Massole de 
Montant, Jacques de Baune, Baron 
d'Avejan, ^olibois, Belcastel, Jaucourt 
de Villarnoue, Lislemaretz, De Mon- 
tazier, and the three brothers De Batz. 
—Ibid. p. 232. 



234 



THE HUGUENOTS ABROAD. chap. ix. 



ancestors held high rank in the French service. One 
of them was killed at the battle of Ivry on the side 
of Henry IV. ; and another commanded under Eichelieu 
at the siege of Eochelle. The Marshal, whose mother 
was an Englishwoman of the noble house of Dudley, 
began his career in the Swedish army in the Thirty 
Years' War, after which he entered the service of the 
Netherlands, and subsequently that of France. There 
he led an active and distinguished life, and rose by 
successive steps to the rank of marshal. The great 
Conde had the highest opinion of his military capacity, 
comparing him to Turenne. He commanded armies 
successfully in Flanders, Portugal, and Holland ; but 
on the Eevocation of the Edict, being unable to conform 
to popery, he felt compelled to resign his military 
honours and emoluments and leave France for ever. 

Schomberg first went into Portugal, which was as- 
signed to him as his place of exile ; but he shortly 
after left that country to take service, with numerous 
other French officers, under Frederick William of 
Brandenburg. His stay at Berlin was, however, of 
short duration ; for when he heard of the intentions of 
William of Orange with respect to England, he at once 
determined to join him. Offers of the most tempting 
kind were held out by Frederick William to induce 
him to remain in Prussia. The elector proposed to 
appoint him governor-general, minister of state, and 
member of the privy council ; but in vain. Schomberg 
felt that the interests of Protestantism, of which Wil- 
liam of Orange was the recognised leader, required 



chap. ix. THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. 



235 



him to forego his own personal interests ; and though 
nearly seventy years of age, he quitted the service of 
Prussia to enter that of Holland. He was accompanied 
-by a large number of veteran Huguenot officers, full of 
bitter resentment against the monarch who had driven 
them forth from France, and who burned to meet their 
persecutors in the field and avenge themselves of the 
cruel wrongs which they had suffered at their hands. 

What the embittered feelings of the French Pro- 
testant gentry were, and what was the nature of the 
injuries they had suffered because of their religion, 
may, however, be best explained by the following 
narrative of the sufferings and adventures of a Norman 
gentleman who succeeded in making his escape from 
France, joined the liberating army of William of Orange 
as captain of dragoons, took part in the expedition to 
England, served with the English army in the Irish 
campaigns, and afterwards settled at Portaiiington in 
Ireland, where he died in 1709. 



CHAPTEE X. 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET — HIS ESCAPE FROM 
FRANCE INTO HOLLAND. 

Isaac Dumont de Bostaquet was a Protestant 
gentleman, possessing considerable landed property 
near Yerville in Normandy, about eight leagues from 
Dieppe. He had been well educated in his youth, and 
served with distinction in the French army as an 
officer of Norman horse. After leaving the army, he 
married and settled on his paternal estates, where he 
lived the life of a retired country gentleman * 

It was about the year 1661 that the first niutter- 
ings of the coming storm reached De Bostaquet in his 
ancient chateau of La Fontelaye. The Koman Catho- 
lics, supported by the king, had begun to pull down 
the Protestant churches in many districts ; and now it 
began to be rumoured abroad that several in Normandy 



* The account given in this chapter 
is mainly drawn from the M'eiuoircs 
Inedits de Dumont de Bostaquet, Gcn- 
tilhomme Normand, edited by MM. 
Read and Waddington, and published 
at Paris in 1864. The MS. was in the 
possession of Dr. Vignoles, Dean of 
Ossory, a lineal descendant of De 
Bostaquet, and was lent by him to 
Lord Macaulay for perusal while the 
latter was engaged on his History of 



England. Lord Macaulay did not 
make much use of the MS., probably 
because it was difficult to read in the 
old French ; but the references made 
to it in the foot-notes of his work, 
induced the French editors to apply 
for a eopy of the MS. to the Dean of 
Ossory, who courteously acceded to 
their request, and hence its recent 
publication. 



chap. x. CHA TEA U OF LA FONTELA YE. 



237 



were to be demolished ; amongst others the church of 
Lindebceuf, in which De Bostaquet and his family 
worshipped. He at once set out for Paris, to endeavour, 
if possible, to prevent this outrage being done. He 
saw his old commander Turenne, and had interviews 
with the king's ministers, but without any satisfactory 
result ; for on his return to Normandy he found the 
temple at Lindebceuf had been demolished during his 
absence. 

When De Bostaquet complained to the local 
authorities of the outrage, he was told that the king 
was resolved to render the exercise of the Protestant 
worship so difficult, that it would be necessary for all 
Protestants throughout France to conform themselves 
to the kings religion. This, however, De Bostaquet 
was not prepared to do ; and a temporary place of 
worship was fitted up in the chateau at La Fontelaye, 
where the scattered flock of Lindebceuf re-assembled, 
and the seigneur himself on an emergency preached, 
baptized, and performed the other offices of religion. 
And thus he led an active and useful life in the neigh- 
bourhood for many years. 

But the persecution of the Protestants became 
increasingly hard to bear. More of their churches were 
pulled down, and their worship was becoming all but 
proscribed. De Bostaquet began to meditate emi- 
gration into Holland ; but he was bound to France by 
many ties — of family as well as property. By his first 
wife he had a family of six daughters and one son. 
Shortly after her death he married a second time, and 



238 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



a second family of six children was added to the first. 
But his second wife also died, leaving him with a very 
large family to rear and educate ; and, as intelligent 
female help was essential for this purpose, he was thus 
induced to marry a third time ; and a third family, of 
two sons and three daughters, was added to the ori- 
ginal number. 

At last the edict was revoked, and the dragoons 
were let loose on the provinces to compel the conver- 
sion of the Protestants. A body of cuirassiers was 
sent into Normandy, which had hitherto been exempt 
from such visitations. On the intelligence of their 
advance reaching De Bostaquet, he summoned a meet- 
ing of the neighbouring Protestant gentry at his house 
at La Fontelaye, to consider what was best to be done. 
He then declared to them his intention of leaving 
France should the king persist in his tyrannical course. 
Although all who were present praised his resolution, 
none offered to accompany him — not even his eldest 
son, who had been married only a few months before. 
When the ladies of the household were apprised of the 
resolution he had expressed, they implored him, with 
tears in their eyes, not to leave them ; if he did, they 
felt themselves to be lost. His wife, on the eve of 
another confinement, joined her entreaties to those of 
his children ; and he felt that under such circumstances 
flight was impossible. 

The intelligence shortly reached La Fontelaye that 
the cuirassiers had entered Eouen sword in hand, under 
the Marquis de Beaupre Choiseul ; that the quartering 



CHAP. X. 



DRAGONNADE AT ROUE A . 



239 



of the troops on the inhabitants was producing " con- 
versions" by wholesale ; and that crowds were running 
to M. de Marillac, the Intendant, to sign their abjuration, 
and thus get rid of the soldiers. De Bostaquet then re- 
solved to go over to Eouen himself, and see with his own 
eyes what was going on there. He was greatly shocked 
both by what he saw and by what he heard. Sorrow 
sat on all countenances except those of the dragoons, 
who paraded the streets with a truculent air. There 
was a constant moving of them from house to house, 
where those quartered remained, swearing, drinking, 
and hectoring, until the inmates had signed their abju- 
ration, when they were withdrawn for the purpose of 
being quartered elsewhere. De Bostaquet was in- 
effably pained to find that these measures were gene- 
rally successful ; that all classes were making haste to 
conform ; and that even his brother-in-law, M. de 
Lamberville, who had been so staunch but a few days 
before, had been carried along by the stream and 
abjured. 

De Bostaquet hastened from the place and returned 
to La Fontelaye sad at heart. The intelligence he 
brought with him of the dragonnades at Eouen occa- 
sioned deep concern in the minds of his household ; 
but only one feeling pervaded them — resignation and 
steadfastness. De Bostaquet took refuge in the hope 
that, belonging as he did to the noblesse, he would be 
spared the quartering of troops in his family. But he 
was mistaken. At Eouen, the commandant quartered 
thirty horsemen upon Sieur Chauvel, until he and his 



240 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



lady, to get rid of them, signed their abjuration ; and 
an intimation was shortly after made to De Bostaquet, 
that unless he and his family abjured, a detachment 
of twenty-five dragoons would be quartered in his 
chateau. Fearing the effects on his wife, in her then 
delicate state of health, as well as desiring to save his 
children from the horrors of such a visitation, he at 
once proceeded to Dieppe with his eldest son, and pro- 
mised to sign his abjuration, after placing himself for 
a time under the instruction of the reverend peniten- 
tiary of Notre Dame de Rouen. 

No sooner had he put his name to the paper than 
he felt degraded in his own eyes. He felt that he 
had attached his signature to a falsehood, for he had 
no intention of attending mass or abjuring his religion. 
But his neighbours were now abjuring all round. His 
intimate friend, the Sieur de Boisse, had a company of 
musketeers quartered on him until he signed. Another 
neighbour, the Sieur de Montigny, was in like man- 
ner compelled to abjure, — his mother and four daugh- 
ters, to avoid the written lie, having previously 
escaped into Holland. None were allowed to go free. 
Old M. de Grosmenil, De Bostaquet's father-in-law, 
though laid up by gout and scarce able to hold a pen, 
was compelled to sign. In anticipation of the quar- 
tering of the dragoons on the family, his wife had gone 
into concealment, the children had left the house, 
and even the domestics could with difficulty be in- 
duced to remain. The eldest daughter fled through 
Picardy into Holland ; the younger daughters took 



CHAP. X. 



THE FORCED « CONVERSIONS; 



241 



refuge with their relatives in Eouen ; the son also fled, 
none knew whither. Madame de Grosmenil issued 
from her concealment to take her place by her suffer- 
ing husband's bed, and she too was compelled to sign 
her abjuration ; but she was so shocked and grieved 
by the sin she felt she had committed that she shortly 
after fell ill and died. "All our families/' says De 
Bostaquet, " succumbed by turns." A body of troops 
next made their appearance at La Fontelaye, and 
required all the members of the household to sign 
their abjuration. De Bostaquet's wife, his mother — 
whose grey hairs did not protect her — his sons, 
daughters, and domestics, were all required to sign. 

" The sad state to which my soul was reduced/' continues De 
Bostaquet, " and the general desolation of the Church, occasioned 
me the profoundest grief. . . . All feeling equally criminal, we 
no longer enjoyed that tranquillity of mind which before had 
made us happy. God seemed to have hid himself from us ; and 
though by our worship, which we continued publicly to celebrate, 
we might give evidence of the purity of our sentiments and the 
sincerity of our repentance, my crime never ceased to weigh upon 
my mind, and I bitterly reproached myself for having set so bad 
an example before my family as well as my neighbours. . . . 
But I could not entertain without grief the thought of my 
children being exposed to the danger of falling a prey to these 
demons, who might any moment have carried them away from 
me. I was constantly meditating flight ; but the flesh fought 
against the spirit, and the fear of abandoning this large family, 
together with the difficulty I saw before me of providing a sub- 
sistence for them in a foreign land, held me back ; though I still 
watched for a favourable opportunity for escaping from France, 
by which time I hoped to be enabled to provide myself with 
money by the sale of my property."* 



* De Bostaquet — Memoires Tnedits, p. 111. 
R 



242 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



The whole family now began seriously to meditate 
flight from France — De Bostaquet's mother, notwith- 
standing her burden of eighty years, being one of the 
most eager to escape. Attempts were first made to 
send away the girls singly, and several journeys were 
made to the nearest port with that object ; but no ship 
was to be met with, and the sea-coast was found strictly 
guarded. De Bostaquet's design having become known 
to the commandant at Dieppe, he was privately warned 
of the risk he ran of being informed against, and of 
having his property confiscated and himself sent to the 
galleys. But the ladies of the family became every 
day more urgent to fly, declaring that their consciences 
would not allow them any longer hypocritically to 
conform to a church which they detested, and that 
they were resolved to escape from their present de- 
gradation at all risks. 

At length it was arranged that an opportunity 
should be taken of escaping during the fetes of Pente- 
cost, when there was to be a grand review of the pea- 
santry appointed to guard the coast, during which they 
would necessarily be withdrawn from their posts as 
watchers of the Huguenot fugitives. The family plans 
were thus somewhat precipitated, before De Bostaquet 
had been enabled to convert his property into money, 
and thereby provide himself with the means of con- 
ducting the emigration of so large a family. It was 
first intended that the young ladies should endeavour 
to make their escape, their father accompanying them 
to the coast to see them safe on board ship, and then 



CHAP. X. 



ATTEMPTED FLIGHT. 



243 



returning to watch over his wife, who was approaching 
the time of her confinement. 

On the morning of Pentecost Sunday, the whole 
family assembled at worship, and besought the blessing 
of God on their projected enterprise. After dinner, the 
party set out. It consisted of De Bostaquet, his aged 
mother, several grown daughters, and many children. 
The father had intended that his younger son should 
stay behind, but with tears in his eyes he implored 
leave to accompany them. The cavalcade first pro- 
ceeded to the village of La Haliere, where arrangements 
had been made for their spending the night, while De 
Bostaquet proceeded to Saint Aubin to engage an Eng- 
lish vessel lying there to take them off the coast. 

The following night, about ten o'clock, the party 
set out from Luneray, accompanied by many friends 
and a large number of fugitives, like themselves mak- 
ing for the sea-coast. De Bostaquet rode first, with 
his sister behind him on a pillion. His son-in-law De 
Benfreville, and his wife, rode another horse in like 
manner. De Bostaquet's mother, the old lady of 
eighty, was mounted on a quiet pony, and attended 
by two peasants. His son and daughter were also 
mounted, the latter on a peasant's horse which carried 
the valises. De Benfreville's valet rode another nag, 
and was armed with a musketoon. Thus mounted, 
after many adieus the party set out for Saint Aubin. 
On their way thither they were joined by other 
relatives— M. de Montcornet, an old officer in the 
French army, and De Bostaquet's brother-in-law, M. 



244 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



de Bequigny, who was accompanied by a German 
valet with another young lady behind him on a 
pillion. 

" We found before us in the plain," says De Bostaquet, 
" more than three hundred persons — men, women, and children 
—all making for the sea-coast, some for Saint Aubin, and others 
for Quiberville. Nearly the whole of these people were peasants, 
there being very few of the better class among them ; and none 
bore arms but ourselves and the two valets of de Bequigny and 
de Renfreville, who carried musketoons. The facility with 
which fugitives had heretofore been enabled to escape, and the 
belief that there was no danger connected with our undertaking, 
made us travel without much precaution. The night was charm- 
ing, and the moon shone out brightly. The delicious coolness 
which succeeded the heat of the preceding day enabled the poor 
peasants on foot to march forward with a lighter step ; and the 
prospect of a speedy deliverance from their captivity made them 
almost run towards the shore with as much joy as if they had 
been bound for a wedding-party. 

" We passed by the end of the village of Avremenil, where a 
great number of the inhabitants had assembled to see us pass. 
They wished us Ion voyage, and all things seemed favourable for 
our design. On the way, M. de Bequigny, who had remained 
behind, spurred on to the head of the troop where I was, to in- 
form me that Madame de Roncheraye, my sister-in-law, had come 
to join us in her carriage, with her three children and my 
daughter, from Eiboeuf, together with a young lady from Eouen, 
named Duval, and that they begged me to wait for them. I 
accordingly checked the cavalcade, and we went forward more 
slowly. 

"Those who intended to embark at Quiberville now left 
us, while those who were bound for Saint Aubin proceeded in 
that direction. As yet we had encountered no obstacle. We 
passed through Flainville without any one speaking to us ; and, 
.flattering ourselves that everything was propitious, we at length 
reached the shore. We found the coast-guard station empty; 
no one appeared; and without fear we alighted to rest our 



chap. x. ATTACKED BY THE COAST- GUARD. 



horses. We seated the ladies on the shingle by the side of my 
mother, a tall girl from Caen keeping them company. 

" I was disappointed at seeing no signs of the vessel in 
which we were to embark. I did not know that they were 
waiting for some signal to approach the land. While I was in 
this state of anxiety, my son came to inform me that his aimt 
had arrived. Her carriage had not been able to reach the shore, 
and she waited for me about a gun-shot off. I went on foot, 
accompanied by my son, to find her. She and her children were 
bathed in tears at the thought of their separation. She em- 
braced me tenderly, and the sight of herself and little ones 
afflicted me exceedingly. My daughter from Riboeuf alighted 
from the carriage to salute me, as well as Mademoiselle Duval. 

" I had been with them for a very little while, when I per- 
ceived there was a general movement down by the margin of the 
sea, where I had left my party. I asked what it was, and fear- 
ing lest the vessel might appear too far off, I proposed to have 
the carriage brought nearer to the shore ; but I was not left long 
in uncertainty. A peasant called out to me, that there was a 
great disturbance going forward; and soon after I heard the 
sound of drums beating, followed by a discharge of musketry. 
It immediately occurred to me that it must be the coast-guard 
returned to occupy their post, who had fallen on our party ; and 
I began to fear that we were irretrievably lost. I was on foot 
alone, with my little son, near the carriage. I did not then see 
two horsemen coming down upon us at full speed, but I heard 
voices crying with all their might, ' Help ! help ! ' I found my- 
self in a strange state of embarrassment, without means of 
defence, when my lacquey, who was holding my horses on the 
beach, ran towards me with my arms. 

" I had only time to throw myself on my horse and call out 
to my sister-in-law in the carriage, to turn back quickly, when I 
hastened, pistol in hand, to the place whence the screams pro- 
ceeded. Scarce was I clear of the carriage, when a horseman 
shouted, ' Kill ! kill ! ' I answered, ' Fire, rascal ! ' At the same 
moment he fired his pistol full at me, so near that the discharge 
flashed along my left cheek and set fire to my peruke, but with- 
out wounding me. I was still so near the carriage, that both 



246 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



the coachman and lacquey saw my hair in a blaze. I took aim 
with my pistol at the stomach of the scoundrel, but happily for 
him it missed fire, although I had primed it afresh on leaving 
Luneray. The horseman at once turned tail, accompanied by his 
comrade. I then took my other pistol, and followed them at 
the trot, when the one called out to the other, ' Eire ! fire ! ' 
One of them had a musket, with which he took aim at me, and 
as it was nearly as light as day and I was only two or three 
horse-lengths from him, he fired and hit me in the left arm with 
which I was holding my bridle. I moved my arm quickly to 
ascertain whether it was broken, and putting spurs to my horse, 
I gained the crupper of the man who had first fired at me, who 
was now on my left, and as he bent over his horse's neck, I dis- 
charged my pistol full into his haunch. The two horsemen at 
once disaj^peared and fled. 

" I now heard the voice of De B6quigny, who, embarrassed by 
his assailants on foot, was furiously defending himself ; and, with- 
out losing time in pursuing the fugitives, I ran up to him sword 
in hand, encountering on the way my son-in-law, who was coming 
towards me. I asked him whither he was going ; and he said 
he was running in search of the horses, which his valet had taken 
away. I told him it was in vain, and that he was flying as fast 
as legs could carry him, for I had caught sight of him passing as 
I mounted my horse. But I had no time to reason with him. 
In a moment I had joined De Bequigny, who had with him only 
old Montcornet, my wife's uncle ; but before a few minutes had 
passed, we had scattered the canaille, and found ourselves mas- 
ters of the field. De Bequigny informed me that his horse was 
wounded, and that he could do no more ; and I told him that I 
was wounded in the arm, but that it was necessary, without loss 
of time, to ascertain what had become of the poor women. 

" We found them almost in the same place that we had left 
them, but abandoned by everybody ; the attendants and the rest 
of the troop having run away along the coast, under the cliffs. 
My mother, who was extremely deaf through age, had not heard 
the shots, and did not know what to make of the disturbance, 
thinking only of the vessel, which had not yet made its appear- 
ance. My sister, greatly alarmed, on my reproaching her with 



CHAP. X. 



ALARMING POSITION. 



247 



not having quietly followed the others, answered, that rny mother 
was unable to walk, being too much burdened by her dress ; 
for, fearing the coldness of the night, she had clothed herself 
heavily. M. de Bequigny then suggested that it might yet be 
possible to rally some of the men of our troop, and thereby rescue 
the ladies from their peril. Without loss of time I ran along the 
beach for some distance, supposing that some of the men might 
have hidden under the cliffs through fear ; but my labour was 
useless — I saw only some girls, who fled away weeping. Con- 
sidering that my presence would be more useful to our poor 
women, I rejoined them at the gallop. M. de Bequigny, on his 
part, had returned from the direction of the coast-guard station, 
to ascertain whether there were any persons lurking there, for 
we entertained no doubt that it was the coast-suard that had 

o 

attacked us ; and the two horsemen with whom I had the affair 
confirmed me in this impression, for I knew that such men were 
appointed to patrol the coasts, and visit the posts, all the night 
through. On coming up to me. Bequigny said he feared we 
were lost ; that the rascals had rallied to the number of about 
forty, and were preparing for another attack. 

" We had no balls remaining with which to reload our pistols. 
Loss of blood already made me feel very faint. De Bequigny's 
horse had been wounded in the shoulder by a musket-shot, and 
had now only three legs to go on. In this extremity, and not know- 
ing what to do to save the women and children, I begged him to 
set my mother behind me on horseback. He tried, but she was 
too heavy, and he set her down again. M. de Mont cornet was 
the only other man we had with us j but he was useless. He 
was seventy-two : and the little nag he rode could not be of much 
service. De Bequigny's valet had run away, after having in the 
skirmish fired his musketoon and wounded a coast-guardsman in 
the shoulder, of which the man died. The tide, which began to 
rise, deterred me from leading the women and children under the 
cliffs ; besides, I was uncertain of the route in that clirection. 
My mother and sister conjured me to fly instantly, because, if I 
was captured, my ruin was certain, whilst the worst that could 
happen to them would be confinement in a convent. 

" In this dire extremity my heart was torn by a thousand 



248 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



conflicting emotions, and overwhelmed with despair at being 
unable to rescue those so dear to me from the perils which beset 
them. I knew not what course to take. While in this state of 
irresolution, I found myself becoming faint through loss of blood. 
Taking out my handkerchief, I asked my sister to tie it round 
my arm, which was still bleeding ; but wanting the nerve to do 
so, as well as not being sufficiently tall to reach me on horseback, 
I addressed myself to the young lady from Caen, who was with 
them, and whom they called La Rosiere. She was tall, and by 
the light of the moon she looked a handsome girl. She had great 
reluctance to approach me in the state in which I was ; but at 
last, after entreating her earnestly, she did me the service which 
I required ; and the further flow of blood was stopped. 

" After resisting for some time the entreaties of my mother 
and sister to leave them and fly for my life — seeing that my stay- 
ing longer with them was useless, and that De Montcornet and 
De Bequigny also urged me to fly — I felt that at length I must 
yield to my fate, and leave them in the hands of Providence. 
My sister, who feared being robbed by the coast-guard on their 
return, gave me her twenty louis d'ors to keep, and praying 
heaven to preserve me, they forced me to leave them and take to 
flight, which I did with the greatest grief that I had ever expe- 
rienced in the whole course of my life."* 

De Bostaquet and his Mend De Bequigny first fled 
along the shore, but the shingle greatly hindered them. 
On their way, they fell in first with De Bequigny ? s 
valet, who had fled with the horses, and shortly after 
with Judith-Julie, Dumont's little daughter, accom- 
panied by a peasant and his wife. She was lifted up 
and placed in front of the valet, and they rode on. 
Leaving the sea-shore by a road which led from the 
beach inland, Dumont preceded them, his drawn sword 
in his hand. They had not gone far when they were 

* Memoires Inedits, pp. 121-5. 



CHAP. X. 



FLIGHT OF DE BOSTAQUET. 



249 



met by six horsemen, who halted and seemed uncertain 
whether to attack or not ; but observing Dumont in an 
attitude of defence they retired, and the fugitives fled 
as fast as Bequigny's wounded horse would allow them 
to Luneray, to the house from which they had set out 
the previous night. There he left his little daughter, 
and again De Bequigny and he rode out into the night. 
As day broke, they reached Saint Laurent. They went 
direct to the house of a Huguenot surgeon, who re- 
moved Dumont s bloody shirt, probed the wound to his 
extreme agony, but could not find the ball ; the surgeon 
concluding that it was firmly lodged between the two 
bones of the fore-arm. The place was too unsafe for 
Dumont to remain, and though suffering much and 
greatly needing rest, he set out again, and made for his 
family mansion at La Fontelaye. But he did not dare 
to enter the house. Ali^htino; at the door of one of 
his tenants named Malherbe, devoted to his interest, he 
despatched him with a message to Madame de Bosta- 
quet, who at once hastened to her husband's side. Her 
agony of grief may be imagined on seeing him, pale 
and suffering, his clothes covered with blood, and his 
bandaged arm in a sling. Giving her hasty instruc- 
tions as to what she was to do in his absence, among 
other things with respect to the sale of his property 
and everything that could be converted into money ; 
and after much weeping, and taking many tender em- 
braces of his wife and daughters, committing them to 
the care of God, he mounted again and fled northwards 
for liberty and life. 



250 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



De Bostaquet proceeds in his narrative to give a 
very graphic account of his flight across Normandy, 
Picardy, Artois, and Flanders, into Holland, in the 
course of which he traversed woods, swam rivers, and 
had many hairbreadth escapes. Knowing the country 
thoroughly, and having many friends and relatives in 
Normandy and Picardy, Koman Catholics as well as 
Protestants, he often contrived to obtain a night's 
shelter, a change of linen, and sometimes a change of 
horses for himself and his friend, Saint-Foy, who ac- 
companied him. They lodged the first night at Var- 
vannes with a kinsman on whom he could rely, for M. 
de Verdun, says De Bostaquet, " was a good man, 
though a papist and even a bigot." A surgeon was 
sent for to dress the fugitive's arm, which had become 
increasingly painful. The surgeon probed the wound, 
but still no ball could be found. Mounting again, the 
two rode all day, and by nightfall reached Grosmesnil. 
Sending for a skilled army surgeon, the wound was 
probed again, but with no better result. Here the 
rumour of the affair at Saint Aubin, greatly magnified, 
reached De Bostaquet ; and, finding that his only safety 
lay in flight, he started again with his friend and 
took the route for Holland through Picardy. They 
rode onwards to Belozane, then to Neufchatel, where 
he took leave of Saint-Foy. 

The fugitive reached Foucarmont alone by moon- 
light in great pain, his arm being exceedingly swollen 
and much inflamed. He at once sent for a surgeon, 
who dressed the wound, but feared gangrene. Next 



chap. x. FLIGHT TOWARDS HOLLAND. 



251 



morning the inflammation had subsided, and he set out 
again, reaching the outskirts of Abbeville, which he 
passed on the left, and, arming at Pont-cle-Eeiny, he 
there crossed the Somme. He was now in Picardy. 
Pressing onward, he arrived at Prouville, where he was 
kindly entertained for the night by a Protestant friend, 
M. de Monthuc. The pain and inflammation in his 
arm still increasing, the family surgeon was sent for. 
The wound, when exposed, was found black, swollen, 
and angry-looking. The surgeon sounded again, 
found no ball, and concluded by recommending per- 
fect rest and low diet. The patient remained with his 
friend for two days, during which M. Montcornet ar- 
rived, for the purpose of accompanying him in his 
flight into Holland. Next day, to De Bostaquet's 
great surprise, the ball, for which the surgeons had so 
often been searching in vain, was found in the finder of 
one of his gloves, into which it had fallen. He was 
now comparatively relieved ; and, unwilling to tres- 
pass longer upon the kindness of his friends, after a 
few more days' rest he again took the road with his 
aged relative. They travelled by Le Quesnel and 
Doullens, then along the grand high-road of Hesdin 
and through the woods of the Abbey of Sercan ; next 
striking the Arras road (where they were threatened 
with an attack by foot-pads), they arrived at La 
Guorgues ; and crossing the frontier, they at last, after 
many adventures and perils, arrived in safety at 
Courtrai, where they began to breathe freely. But 
Dumont did not feel himself safe until he had reached 



252 



DUMONT DE BOSTAQUET. 



CHAP. X. 



Ghent ; for Courtrai was still under the dominion of 
Spain. So again pushing on, the fugitives halted not 
until they arrived at Ghent late at night, where the 
two way-worn travellers at length slept soundly. 
Next day, Montcornet, who, though seventy-two years 
old, had stood the fatigues of the journey surprisingly 
well, proceeded to join his son, then lying with many 
other refugee officers in garrison at Maestricht ; while 
De Bostaquet went forward into Holland to join the 
fugitives who were now flocking thither in great num- 
bers from all parts of France. 

Such is a rapid outline of the escape of Dumont de 
Bostaquet into the great Protestant asylum of the 
north. His joy, however, was mingled with grief; 
for he had left his wife and family behind him in 
France, under the heel of the persecutor. After many 
painful rumours of the severe punishments to which 
his children had been subjected, he was at length 
joined by his wife, his son, and one of his daughters, 
who succeeded in escaping by sea. The ladies, taken 
prisoners by the coast-guard at Saint Aubin, besides 
being heavily fined, were condemned to be confined in 
convents, some for several years each, and others for 
life ; the gentlemen and men-servants who accom- 
panied them were condemned to the galleys for life, 
and their property and goods were declared forfeited 
to the king. This completed the ruin of Dumont de 
Bostaquet so far as worldly wealth was concerned ; for 
by the law of Louis XIV., the property not only of all 
fugitives, but of all who abetted fugitives in their 



CHAP. X. 



HIS REFUGE IN HOLLAND. 



253 



attempt to escape, was declared confiscated, while they 
were themselves liable, if caught, to suffer the penalty 
of death. 

Dumont de Bostaquet now had no home save 
under the flag of the Prince of Orange ; and when 
such sufferings as those which we have so briefly and 
imperfectly described, are taken into account, we need 
not wonder at the ardour with which the banished 
French soldiers and gentry took service under the 
Prince who so generously gave them protection, and the 
fury with which they fought against the despot who 
had ruined them, driven them forth from France, and 
continued to persecute themselves and their families 
even to the death. 



CHAPTEE XL 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND — THE IRISH CAMPAIGNS OF 

1689-90. 

Dumont de Bostaquet was hospitably received by the 
Prince of Orange, and, on his application for employ- 
ment, was appointed to the same rank in the Dntch 
army that he had before held in that of Louis XIV. 
When the expedition to England was decided upon, 
such of the refugee officers as were disposed to join 
William were invited to send in their names ; and De 
Bostaquet at once volunteered, with numbers more. 
Fifty of the French officers were selected for the pur- 
pose of being incorporated in his two dragoon regi- 
ments, red and blue ; and De Bostaquet was appointed 
to a captaincy in the former regiment, of which De 
Louvigny was colonel. 

The fleet of William had already been assembled at 
Maasluis, and with the troops on board shortly spread 
its sails for England. But the expedition, consisting of 
about five hundred sail, had scarcely left the Dutch 
shores before it was dispersed by a storm, which raged 
for three days. One ship, containing two companies of 
French infantry, commanded by Captains de Chauver- 
nay and Bapin-Thoyras (afterwards the historian), was 
driven towards the coast of Norway. Those on board 



CHAP. XI. 



EXPEDITION TO ENGLAND. 



255 



gave themselves up for lost ; but the storm abating, 
the course of the vessel was altered, and she afterwards 
reached the Maas in safety. Very few ships were miss- 
ing when the expedition re-assembled ; but among 
the lost was one containing four companies of a Hol- 
stein regiment and some sixty French officers and 
volunteers. When De Bostaquet's ship arrived in the 
Maas, it was found that many of the troop horses had 
been killed, or were so maimed as to be rendered unfit 
for service. After a few days' indefatigable labour, 
however, all damages were made good, the fleet was 
refitted anew, and again put to sea — this time with 
better prospect of success. 

" Next day," says De Bostaquet, in his Memoirs, " we saw 
the coasts of France and England stretching before us on either 
side. I confess that I did not look upon my ungrateful country 
without deep emotion, as I thought of the many ties of affection 
which still bound me to it — of my children, and the dear relatives 
I had left behind ; but as our fleet might even now be working 
out their deliverance, and as England was drawing nearer, I felt 
that one must cast such thoughts aside, and trust that God would 
yet put it into the heart of our hero to help our poor country 
under the oppressions beneath which she was groaning. The 
fleet was beheld by the people on the opposite shores with very 
different emotions. France trembled at the sight ; while Eng- 
land, seeing her deliverer approaching, leapt with joy. It seemed 
as if the Prince took pleasure in alarming France, whose coasts 
he long kept in sight. But at length, leaving France behind us, 
we made for the opposite shore, and all day long we held along 
the English coast, sailing towards the west. Night hid the 
land from further view, and next morning not a trace of it was 
to be seen. As the wind held good, we thought that by this 
time we must have passed out of the English Channel, though 
we knew not whether we were bound. Many of our soldiers 



256 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. 



CHAP. XI. 



from Poitou hoped that we might effect a landing there. But at 
three in the afternoon we again caught sight of the English land 
on our right, and found that we were still holding the same 
course. M. de Bethencour, who knew the coast, assured us that 
we were bound for Plymouth ; and it seemed to me that such 
was the Prince's design. But the wind having shifted, we were 
astonished to see our vanguard put about, and sail as if' right 
down upon us. Nothing could be more beautiful than the evo- 
lution of the immense flotilla which now took place under a 
glorious sky. The main body of the fleet and the rear-guard 
lay to, in order to allow the Prince's division to pass through 
them, on which every ship in its turn prepared to tack. There 
were no longer any doubts as to where we were to land. We 
distinctly saw the people along the heights watching, and doubt- 
less admiring, the magnificent spectacle ; but there appeared to 
be no signs of alarm at sight of the multitude of ships about to 
enter their beautiful bay."* 

De Bostaquet proceeds to describe the landing at 
Torbay, and the march of the little army inland, 
through mud and mire, under heavy rain and along 
villanous roads, until they entered Exeter amidst the 
acclamations of the people. De Bostaquet found that 
many of his exiled countrymen had already settled at 
Exeter, where they had a church and minister of their 
own. Among others, he met with a French tailor 
from Lintot in Normandy, who had become established 
in business, besides other refugees from Dieppe and the 
adjoining country, who were settled and doing well. 
De Bostaquet expressed himself much gratified with 
his short stay in Exeter, which he praised for its 
wealth, its commerce, its manufactures, and the hospi- 
tality of its inhabitants.t 



* Memoircs Inedits de Dumont de f While in Exeter, De Bostaquet 
Bostaquet, pp. 214-15. for the first time attended the English 



CHAP. XT. 



FLIGHT OF JAMES II. 



257 



After resting six or seven days at Exeter, William 
and his army marched upon London through Salis- 
bury, being daily joined by fresh adherents — gentry, 
officers, and soldiers. The army of James made no 
effort at resistance, but steadily retired : the only show 
of a stand being made at Heading, where fire hundred 
of the king's horse, doubtless fighting without heart, 
were put to flight by a hundred and fifty of AYilliani s 
dragoons, led by the Huguenot Colonel Marouit. Xot 
another shot was fired before TTilliani arrived in Lon- 
don, and was welcomed as the nation's deliverer. By 
this time James was making arrangements for flight, 
together with his Jesuits. He mioht easily have been 
captured and made a martyr of; but the mistake made 
in the case of Charles I. was not repeated, and James, 
having got on board a smack in the Thames, was 
allowed to slink ignominiously out of his kingdom and 
take refuge in France, there to seek the consolation 
of his royal brother Louis the Great, whose policy 
he had so foolishly and so wickedly attempted to 
imitate * 



service in the Cathedral, as conducted 
in the time of James II. He found it 
very different from the plain Calvin- 
istic worship of the Huguenots, and 
thus recorded his impressions of it : — 
" What surprised me was to find that 
it seemed to retain nearly all the ex- 
ternals of popery. The churches have 
altars, two great candles at each side, 
and a hasin of silver or silver gilt 
between. The canons, dressed in sur- 
plice and stole, occup}* stalls on both 



sides of the nave. They have a choir 
of little hoys in surplices who siug 
with them ; the music seems to me 
fine, and they have charming voices. 
But as all this is very much opposed 
to the simplicity of our Eeformed re- 
ligion, I confess I was by no means 
edified with it " (p. 223). 

* Little more than a month elapsed 
between the landing of the Prince of 
Orange in Torbay and the flight of 
James II. The landing took place on 



258 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. 



CHAP. XI. 



The Huguenot officers and soldiers of William's 
army found many of their exiled countrymen already 
settled in London. Soho in the west, and Spitalfields 
in the east, were almost entirely French quarters. 
Numbers of new churches were about this time opened 
for the accommodation of the immigrants, in which the 
service was conducted in French by their own minis- 
ters, some of the most eminent of whom had taken 
refuge in England. The exiles formed communities 
by themselves ; they were for the most part organised 
in congregations ; and a common cause and common 
sufferings usually made them acquainted with each 
other. De Bostaquet and his compatriots, therefore, 
did not find themselves so much strangers in London 
as they expected to be ; for they were daily encounter- 
ing friends and brothers in misfortune. 



the 5th of November 1688, and the 
abdication of James on the 10th De- 
cember following. One of James's 
Jesuit followers addressed the follow- 
ing characteristic letter to his Pro- 
vincial at Eome on the last-mentioned 
date : — 

" Sign or William, my reverend 
Father — Behold the end of all the 
good hopes of the progress of our holy- 
religion in this country. The king 
and the queen are fugitives ; all their 
adherents have abandoned them ; a 
new prince has arrived, with a foreign 
army, without the slightest opposi- 
tion ; a thing the like of which has 
never been seen or heard of, and which 
is without example in history. A 
king, the peaceful possessor of his 
throne, with an army of thirty thou- 
sand soldiers and forty ships of war, is 



flying from his kingdom without firing 
so much as a pistol-shot. . . . The 
greatest evil has come from ourselves : our 
imprudence, our avarice, and our am- 
bition, have occasioned all this. The 
king is served by weak men, knaves 
and fools, and the great minister you 
have sent hither has had his share in 
it. . . . Enough, my dear friend, all 
is over. . . . The confusion is great ; 
neither faith nor hope remain ; we 
are done for this time, and the fathers 
of our holy society have contributed 
their part towards the disaster. All the 
others — bishops, confessors, priests, 
and monks — have conducted them- 
selves with but little prudence." 

This letter (in Italian) is quoted by 
M. Guizot in his Collection des Me- 
moirs relatifs a la Revolution oVAngle- 
terre. 



CHAP. XI. 



THE MARQUIS DE RUVIGNY. 



259 



A distinguished little circle of exiles had by this 
time been formed at Greenwich, of which the aged 
Marquis de Euvigny formed the centre. That noble- 
man had for many years been one of the most trusted 
servants of the French government. He held various 
high offices in his own country, being a general in the 
French army and a councillor of state ; and he had 
on more than one occasion represented France as envoy 
at the English court. But he was a Protestant, and 
therefore precluded from holding public office subse- 
quent to the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes. " Had 
the Marquis," says Macaulay, " chosen to remain in his 
native country, he and his household would have been 
permitted to worship God privately according to their 
own forms. But Euvigny rejected all offers, cast in 
his lot with his brethren, and, at upwards of eighty 
years of age, quitted Versailles, where he might still 
have been a favourite, for a modest dwelling at Green- 
wich. That dwelling was, during the last months of 
his life, the resort of all that was most distinguished 
among his fellow-exiles. His abilities, his experience, 
and his munificent kindness, made him the undisputed 
chief of the refugees. He was at the same time half 
an Englishman, for his sister had been countess of 
Southampton, and he was uncle of Lady Eussell. He 
was long past the time of action. But his two sons, 
both men of eminent courage, devoted their swords to 
the service of William."* 

A French church had been founded by the Marquis 

* Macaulay — History of England, vol. iii. cli. ] 4. 



260 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. 



CHAP. XI. 



of Euvigny at Greenwich, in 1686,* of which M. Seve- 
rin, an old and valued friend of De Bostaquet and his 
wife, had been appointed pastor ; so that our Huguenot 
officer at once found himself at home. He was cordi- 
ally received by the aged Marquis, who encouraged 
him to bring over his family from Holland and settle 
them in the place. De Bostaquet accordingly pro- 
ceeded to the Hague in the spring of 1689, and was 
received with great joy by his wife, after their five 
months' separation. Accompanied by their two child- 
ren, they set out for England, and after a tempestu- 
ous voyage landed at Greenwich, where they were 
cordially welcomed by the Euvigny circle. Here De 
Bostaquet remained for only three months, enjoying 
the society of his family and the hospitality of his 
friends. " The time," says he, " passed like a dream, 
as much because of the joy I experienced at being 
reunited to my wife, as because of the beauties of the 
place and the good society I met there, but above all 
by the kindness of the Euvigny family, whose gene- 
rosity and charity towards the unfortunate exiles is 
unfailing, and command the respect and veneration of 
all who have the honour to know them."t 

During de Bostaquet's sojourn at Greenwich, his 
wife presented him with another son, his nineteenth 
child, to which the Marquis de Euvigny stood god- 

* The French chapel at Greenwich ments were written up in French on 

is still in existence and now used as each side of the pulpit, until the year 

a Baptist chapel. It is situated in 1814, when they were effaced. 
London Street, behind the shop of 

Mr. Harding, oilman. The command- t Memoires Inedits, p. 246. 



CHAP. XI. 



JAMES II. LANDS IN IRELAND. 



2G1 



father, and after whom he was named. Only a month 
later, the good old Marquis died, and De Bostaquet, 
with many other illustrious exiles, followed his remains 
to his tomb in the church of the Savoy, in the Strand, 
wdiere he was buried. 

Meanwhile, William had been occupied in con- 
solidating his government and reducing the disaffected 
parts of the kingdom to obedience. With Scotland 
this was comparatively easy ; but with Ireland the 
case was widely different. The Irish Roman Catholics 
remained loyal to James because of his religion ; and 
when he landed at Kinsale in March 1689, he saw 
nearly the whole country at his feet. Only the little 
Presbyterian colony established in Ulster made any 
show of resistance. James had arrived in Ireland 
with substantial help in arms and money obtained 
from the French king ; and before many weeks had 
elapsed, 40,000 Irish stood in arms to support his 
authority. The forces of William in Ireland were few 
in number and bad in quality, consisting for the most 
part of raw levies of young men suddenly taken from 
the plough. They were therefore altogether unequal 
to cope with the forces of James, Tyrconnel, and the 
French Marshal de Rosen ; and but for vigorous 
measures on the part of William and his government, 
it was clear that Ireland was lost to the English 
crown. 

The best troops of William had by this time been 
either sent abroad or disbanded. The English and 
Dutch veteran regiments had for the most part been 



262 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. 



CHAP. XI. 



despatched to Flanders to resist the French armies of 
Louis, who threatened a diversion in favour of James 
in that quarter; while, in deference to the jealousy 
which the English people naturally entertained against 
the maintenance amongst them of a standing army — 
especially an army of foreigners — the Huguenot regi- 
ments had been disbanded almost immediately after 
the abdication of James and his flight into France. 
So soon, however, as the news of James' landing in 
Ireland reached London, measures were immediately 
taken for their re-embodiment ; and four excellent 
regiments were at once raised — one of cavalry and 
three of infantry. The cavalry regiment was raised 
by Schomberg, who was its colonel ; and it was en- 
tirely composed of French gentlemen — officers and 
privates. The infantry regiments were raised with 
the help of the aged Marquis de Kuvigny ; and at his 
death, in July 1689, the enterprise was zealously pro- 
secuted by his two sons — Henry, the second Marquis, 
and Pierre de Kuvigny, afterwards better known as La 
Caillemotte. These regiments were respectively com- 
manded by La Caillemotte, Cambon, and La Meloniere. 

The French regiments were hastily despatched 
to join the little army of about 10,000 men sent 
into the north of Ireland, to assist the Protestants 
in arms there, the same month in which they were 
raised. Their first operation was conducted against 
the town of Carrickfergus, which fell after a siege of a 
week, but not without loss, for the Huguenot regi- 
ments who led the assault suffered heavily, the Marquis 



chap. xi. THE HUGUENOTS AT DUNDALK. 



263 



de Venours and numerous other officers being amongst 
the killed. 

Shortly after, the Huguenot regiment of cavalry 
arrived from England ; and, joined by three regiments 
of Enniskilleners, the army marched southward. De 
Bostaquet held his former rank of captain in Schom- 
berg's horse ; and he has recorded in his memoirs the 
incidents of the campaign with his usual spirit. The 
march lay through burnt villages and a country 
desolated by the retiring army of James. They passed 
through Newry and Carlingford, both of which were 
found in ashes, and at length arrived in the neighbour- 
hood of Dundalk, where they encamped. James lay 
at Drogheda with an army of 20,000 men, or double 
their number. But the generals of neither force 
wished for battle ; — Schomberg, because he could not 
rely upon his troops, who were ill-fed and (excepting 
the Huguenot veterans) ill-disciplined; and Count 
Kosen, James' French general, because he did not 
wish to incur the risk of a defeat. The raw young 
English soldiers* in the camp at Dundalk, unused to 
campaigning, died in great numbers. The English 
foot were mostly without shoes and very badly fed ; 
yet they were eager to fight, thinking it better to die 
in the field than in the camp. When they clamoured 



* Scliomberg found that the greater of cavalry do their duty better than 

number of them had never before fired the others." And a few months later 

a gun. " Others can inform your Ma- he added — "From these three regi- 

jesty," he wrote to William (12th ments, and from that of cavalry, your 

Oct. 1689) " that the three regiments Majesty has more service than from 

of French infantry and their regiment double the number of the others." 



264 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. chap. xi. 



to be led into action, Schomberg good-humouredly said, 
" We English have stomach enough for righting : it is 
a pity that we are not equally fond of some other 
parts of a soldiers business/' 

At length, after enduring great privations, and 
leaving many of his men under the sod at Dundalk,* 
Schomberg decided to follow the example of the 
Jacobite army, and go into winter-quarters. His con- 
duct of the campaign occasioned much dissatisfaction 
in England, where it was expected that he should 
meet and fight James with a famished army of less 
than half the number, and under every disadvantage. 
It had now, however, become necessary to act with 
vigour if the policy initiated by the revolution of 1688 
was to be upheld ; for a well-appointed army of 7300 
excellent French infantry, commanded by the Count of 
Lauzun, with immense quantities of arms and ammu- 
nition, were on their way from France, with the object 



* " Our camp was on the edge of a 
morass," says De Bostaquet, " shel- 
tered on one side by horrible moun- 
tains, from whence there rose a per- 
petual vapour as from a furnace. The 
scarcity of provisions, together with 
the bad weather, occasioned frightful 
disease. The English died by thou- 
sands. " [It is stated in the Memoirs 
of Dalrymple, that of 15,000 men who 
at different times joined the camp, 
8000 died.] " The colonels, captains, 
and soldiers of the French regiments 
did not escape. Many officers and 
privates died. A friend and relative of 
my own, named Bonel, son of Fresne- 
Cantbrun of Caen, whose mother, 



daughter of Secretary Cognart, was a 
kinsman of my first wife, died, much 
to my sorrow. Our regiment was 
attacked by disease. Captain de Bru- 
giere and Cornet Baucelin both died ; 
the loss of the latter, who was be- 
trothed to a beautiful Norman girl, 
occasioned many tears. Des Saint- 
Hermine and Brasselaye, though they 
had only been a short time in camp, 
both left ill. The first died at Chester, 
and the other almost immediately on 
his reaching Windsor. In short, there 
remained in the camp only the dead 
and the dying." — Memoires Inedits de 
Dumont de Bostaquet, pp. 260-1. 



chap. xi. RECRUITING IN SWITZERLAND. 265 

of expelling the Protestants from Ireland and replac- 
ing James upon the British throne. 

"William felt that this was the great crisis of the 
struggle, and he determined to take the field in person. 
He at once made his arrangements accordingly. He 
ordered back from Flanders his best English and Dutch 
regiments. He also endeavoured, so far as he could, 
to meet Frenchmen by Frenchmen ; and despatched 
agents abroad, into all the countries where the banished 
Huguenot soldiers had settled, inviting them to take 
arms with him against the enemies of their faith. His 
invitation was responded to with alacrity. Many of 
Schoniberg's old soldiers, who had settled in Branden- 
burg, Switzerland, and the provinces of the Lower 
Rhine, left their new homes and flocked to the stan- 
dard of William. The Baron d'Avejan, lieutenant- 
colonel of an English regiment, wrote to a friend in 
Switzerland, urging the immediate enlistment of ex- 
patriated Protestants for his regiment. " I feel assured," 
said he, " that you will not fail to have published in 
all the French churches in Switzerland the obligations 
under which the refugees lie to come and aid us in 
this expedition, which is directed to the glory of God, 
and ultimately to the re-establishment of His church 
in our country."* 

These stirring appeals had the effect of attracting 
a large number of veteran Protestant soldiers to the 



* Quoted by Weiss — History of the — from an unpublished memoir by An- 
French Protestant Refugees, p. 238, thony Court, in the Geneva Library. 



2G6 



BE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. 



CHAP. XI. 



army of William. Sometimes four and five hundred 
men left Geneva in a week for the purpose of enlisting 
in England. Others were despatched from Lausanne, 
where they were provided by the Marquis d'Arzilliers 
with the means of reaching their destination. Many 
more, scattered along the shores of Lake Leman, were 
drilled daily under the flag of Orange, notwithstanding 
the expostulations of Louis' agents, and sent to swell 
the forces of William. 

By these means, as well as by energetic efforts at 
home,* William was enabled, by the month of June 
1690, to assemble in the north of Ireland an army of 
36,000 men — -English, French, Dutch, Danes, and 
Germans ; and putting himself at their head, he at 
once marched southwards Arrived at the Boyne, 
about three miles west of Drogheda, he discerned the 
combined French and Irish army drawn up on the 
other side, prepared to dispute the passage of the river. 
The Huguenot regiments saw before them the flags of 



* De Felice — History of the French 
Protestants (p. 339), says, that " Eng- 
land raised eleven regiments of French, 
volunteers ;" but he does not give his 
authority. It is probable this number 
is an exaggeration. 

f William landed at Carrickfergus 
on the 14th of June 1690. From 
thence he proceeded to Belfast. On 
his way southward to join the army 
at Loughbrickland, when passing 
through the village of Lambeg, near 
Lisburn, he was addressed by one 
Rene Bulmer, a Huguenot refugee, 
then residing in a house now known 



as The Priory. Rene explained to his 
majesty the cause of his being settled 
there ; and as the king was about to 
pass on, he asked permission to em- 
brace him. To this William at once 
assented, receiving the Huguenot's 
salute on his cheek, after which, stoop- 
ing from his horse towards Bulmer's 
wife, a pretty Frenchwoman, he said, 
" And thy wife too ;" and saluted her 
heartily. The name Bulmer has since 
been changed to Boomer, but the 
Christian name Rene or Rainey is still 
preserved among the descendants of 
the family. — Ulster Journal of Archae- 
ology, i. 135, 286-94. 



CHAP. XI. 



BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. 



267 



Louis XIV. and James II. waving together — the army 
of the king who had banished them from country, 
home, and family, making common cause with the 
persecutor of the English Protestants ; and when it 
became known amongst them that every soldier in the 
opposing force bore the same badge — the white cross 
in their hat — which had distinguished the assassins of 
their forefathers on the night of St. Bartholomew, they 
burned to meet them in battle. 

On the morning of the 1st of July, the Count 
Menard de Schomberg, one of the old marshal's sons, 
was ordered to cross the river on the right by the 
bridge of Slane, and turn the left flank of the opposing 
army. This movement he succeeded in accomplishing 
after a sharp but short conflict ; upon which William 
proceeded to lead his left, composed of cavalry, across 
the river, considerably lower down. At the same 
time, the main body of infantry composing the centre 
was ordered to advance. The Dutch guards led, 
closely followed by the Huguenot foot. Plunging into 
the stream, they waded across and reached the op- 
posite bank under a storm of cannon and musketry. 
Scarcely had they struggled up the right bank, than 
the Huguenot colonel, La Caillemotte, was struck down 
by a musket-shot. As he was being carried off the 
field, covered with blood, through the ranks of his ad- 
vancing men, he called out to them, "A la gloire, mes 
enfans ! a la gloire ! " 

A strong body of Irish cavalry charged the ad- 
vancing infantry with great vigour, shook them until 



208 



DE BOSTAQUET IN ENGLAND. 



CHAP. XI. 



they reeled, and compelled them to give way. Old 
Marshal Schomberg, who stood eagerly watching the 
advance of his troops from the northern bank, now saw 
that the crisis of the fight had arrived, and he pre- 
pared to act accordingly. Placing himself at the head 
of his Huguenot regiment of horse which he had held 
in reserve, and pointing with his sword across the 
river, he called out, "Allons, mes amis! rappelez votrc 
courage et vos ressentements : voila vos persecu- 
teurs ! "* and plunged into the stream. On reaching 
the scene of contest, a furious struggle ensued. The 
Dutch and Huguenot infantry rallied; and William, 
coming up from the left with his cavalry, fell upon the 
Irish flank and completed their discomfiture. The 
combined French and Irish army was forced through 
the pass of Duleek, and fled towards Dublin — James II. 
being the first to carry thither the news of his defeat.t 
William's loss did not exceed 400 men ; but to 
his deep grief Marshal Schomberg was amongst the 
fallen, the hero of eighty-two having been cut down 
in the melee by a party of Tyrconnel's horse ; and he 
lay dead upon the field, with many other gallant gen- 
tlemen. 

* Eapin, who relates this incident was received by Lady Tyrconnel, the 
in his History of England, was present wife of his viceroy. " Madam," said 
at the battle of the Boyne as an officer he, "your countrymen can run well." 
in one of the Huguenot regiments. " Not quite so well as your Majesty," 

was her retort, ' ' for I see you have 

+ On reaching Dublin Castle, James won the race. " 



CHAPTER XII. 



HUGUENOT OFFICERS IN THE BRITISH SERVICE. 

It forms no part of our purpose to describe the mili- 
tary operations in Ireland which followed the battle of 
the Boyne, further than to designate the principal 
Huguenot officers who took part in them. Amongst 
these, one of the most distinguished was Henry, second 
Marquis de Ruvigny. At the date of the Revocation, 
he had attained the rank of brigadier in the army of 
Louis XIV., and was esteemed an excellent officer, 
having served with great distinction under Conde and 
Turenne. Indeed, it is believed that the French army 
in Germany would have been lost, but for the skill 
with which he reconciled the quarrels of the contend- 
ing chiefs who aspired to its command on the death of 
Turenne. Louis XIY. anxiously desired to retain 
Ruvigny in his service ; but all his offers of individual 
toleration were refused, and casting in his lot with the 
exiled Protestants, he left France with his father and 
settled with him at Greenwich, dispensing hospitality 
and bounty. Being allowed the enjoyment of his 
French property, he did not join the British army 
which fought in Ireland. But when he heard that his 
only brother, De la Caillemotte, as well as Marshal 
Schomberg, had been killed at the Boyne, he could 



270 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. chap. xii. 



restrain his ardour no longer, and offered his services 
to King William, who appointed him major-general, 
and farther gave him the colonelcy of Schomberg s 
regiment of Huguenot horse. 

Buvigny immediately joined the army of General 
Ginkell in Ireland, while engaged in the siege of Ath- 
lone. There a Huguenot soldier was the first to mount 
the breach, in which he fell, cheering on his comrades. 
That place taken, the French general Saint Euth retired 
with the Irish army to Aughrim, where he took up an 
almost impregnable position. Notwithstanding this 
advantage, Ginkell attacked and routed the Irish, the 
principal share in the victory being attributed to the 
Marquess de Euvigny and his horse, who charged 
impetuously and carried everything before them. That 
the brunt of the battle was borne by the Huguenot 
regiments is shown by the extent of their loss. Eu- 
vigny s regiment lost 144 men killed and wounded; 
that of Cambon 106 ; and that of Belcastle 85 — being 
about one-fifth of the total loss on the side of the victors. 
" After the battle," says De Bostaquet, " Ginkell came 
up and embraced De Euvigny, declaring how much he 
was pleased with his bravery and his conduct ; then 
advancing to the head of our regiment, he highly 
praised the officers as well as soldiers. M. Causaubon, 
who commanded, gained great honour by his valour 
that day." * For the services rendered by De Euvigny 
on this occasion, William raised him to the Irish peer- 
age, under the title of Earl of Galway. 

* Mcmoires Inedits de Dumont de Bostaquet, p. 303. 



CHAP. XII. 



THE EARL OF GALWAY. 



271 



In 1693 Lord Gal way joined William in Flanders, 
and was witli him in the severe battle of Neerwinden, 
where the combined Dutch and English army was 
defeated by Marshal Luxemburg. The Huguenot 
leader fought with conspicuous bravery at the head of 
his cavalry, and succeeded in covering William's 
retreat. He was shortly after promoted to the rank 
of lieutenant-general. 

The war with France was now rasing all round her 
borders — along the Flemish and the German frontiers, 
and as far south as the country of the Yaudois. The 
Vaudois were among the most ancient Protestant people 
in Europe ; and Louis XIV., not satisfied with exter- 
minating Protestantism in his own dominions, sought 
to carry the crusade against it beyond his own fron- 
tiers into the territories of his neighbours. He accord- 
ingly sent to the young Duke of Savoy, requiring him 
to extirpate the Yaudois, unless they would conform to 
the Eoman Catholic religion. The duke refused to 
obey the French king's behest, and besought the help 
of the emperor of Germany and the Protestant princes 
of the north to enable him to resist the armies of 
Louis. The elector of Brandenburg having applied to 
William for one of his generals, Charles, Duke of 
Schomberg, whose father fell at the Boyne, was at 
once despatched to the aid of the Savoy prince, with 
an army consisting for the most part of Huguenot 
refugees. William also undertook to supply a subsidy 
of £100,000 a-year, as the joint contribution of England 
and Holland to the cause of Protestantism in Savoy. 



272 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. 



CHAP. XII. 



Schomberg, on his arrival at Turin, found the 
country in a state of the greatest consternation, the 
French army under Catinat overrunning it in all direc- 
tions. With his vigorous help, however, the progress 
of the French army was speedily checked ; but un- 
fortunately Schomberg allowed himself to be drawn 
into a pitched battle on the plains of Marsiglia in 
October 1693, in which he suffered a complete defeat, 
at the same time receiving a mortal wound, of which 
he died a few days after the battle. 

On this untoward result of the campaign being 
known in England, the Earl of Oalway was despatched 
into Savoy to take the command, as well as to repre- 
sent England and Holland as ambassador at the court 
of Turin. To his dismay he shortly discovered that the 
Duke of Savoy was engaged in a secret treaty with the 
French Government for peace, on which Lord Galway 
at once withdrew with his contingent, — the only object 
he had been able to accomplish being to secure a 
certain degree of liberty of worship for the persecuted 
Vaudois. 

On his return to England, the earl was appointed 
one of the Lords- J ustices of Ireland ; and during the 
time that he held the office, he devoted himself to the 
establishment of the linen trade, the improvement 
of agriculture, and the reparation of the losses and 
devastations from which the country had so severely 
suffered during its civil wars. Among his other under- 
takings was the founding of the French colony of Port- 
arlington. By his influence, he induced a large num- 



CHAP. XII. 



FOUNDING OF P OR TA RLING TON. 



273 



ber of the best class of the refugees — principally consist- 
ing of exiled officers and gentry and their families — to 
settle at that place ; and he liberally assisted them out 
of his private means in promoting the industry and 
prosperity of the town and neighbourhood. He erected 
above a hundred new dwellings of a superior kind for 
the accommodation of the settlers. He built and en- 
dowed two churches for their use — one French, the 
other English — as well as two excellent schools for the 
education of their children. Thus the little town of 
Portarlington shortly became a centre of polite learn- 
ing, from which emanated some of the most distin- 
guished men in Ireland ; while the gentle and industri- 
ous life of the colonists exhibited an example of patient 
labour, neatness, thrift, and orderliness, which was not 
without beneficial effects on the surroimcling population. 

But, much though he did for Portarlington, Lord 
Galway was not permitted to complete what he had so 
well begun. It so happened that as soon as Louis XIV. 
heard that Euvigny had joined the army of William, 
he ordered the immediate confiscation of all his pro- 
perty in France. To compensate his devoted follower 
for his loss, TVilliam conferred upon him the confis- 
cated estate of Portarlington. This appropriation by 
the king was, however, violently attacked in the 
English Parliament ; a bill was passed annulling all 
grants of the kind that he had made ; the Earl of 
Galway's career as an Irish landlord was thus brought 
to an end ; and Euvigny, like many of his fellow-exiles, 
was again landless. 

T 



274 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. chap. xii. 



Nothing, however, could shake the king's attach- 
ment to Lord Galway, or Lord Galway's to him. 
Being unable, as King of England, to reward his faith- 
ful follower, William appointed him general in the 
Dutch army, and colonel of the Dutch regiment of 
foot-guards (blue). In 1701, Evelyn thus records in 
his diary a visit made to the distinguished refugee on 
his arrival in London from Ireland : — " June 22. — I 
went to congratulate the arrival of that worthy and 
excellent person, my Lord Galway, newly come out of 
Ireland, where he had behaved himself so honestly and 
to the exceeding satisfaction of the people; but he 
was removed thence for being a Frenchman, though 
they had not a more worthy, valiant, discreet, and 
trusty person on whom they could have relied for 
conduct and fitness. He was one who had deeply 
suffered, as well as the Marquis his father, for being 
Protestants/' 

From this time, Lord Galway was principally em- 
ployed abroad on diplomatic missions, and in the 
field. The war against France was now in progress on 
the side of Spain, where the third Duke of Schomberg, 
Count Menard, who led the attack in the battle of 
the Boyne, was, in 1704, placed in command of the 
British troops in Spain, then fighting against the 
Bourbon Philip V., in conjunction with a Portuguese 
army. Philip was supported by a French army under 
command of the Duke of Berwick, the natural son of 
the dethroned James II. The campaign languished 
under Schomberg, and the government at home be- 



CPIAP. XII. 



CAMPAIGN IN SPAIN 



275 



coming dissatisfied with his conduct of it, the Earl of 
Galway was sent out to Portugal to take the com- 
mand. 

The campaigns which followed were mostly fought 
over the ground since made so famous by the victories 
of Wellington. There Avas the relief of Gibraltar, the 
storming of Alcantara, the siege of Badajos — in which 
the Earl of Galway lost an arm — the capture of Cuidacl 
Eodrigo, and the advance upon Madrid. Then fol- 
lowed the defection of the Portuguese, and a succession 
of disasters ; the last of which was the battle of 
Almanza, where the British, ill-supported by their Por- 
tuguese allies, were defeated by the French army 
under the Duke of Berwick. Shortly after, the British 
forces returned home, and the Earl of Galway resided 
for the rest of his life mostly at Kookley, near South- 
ampton, taking a kindly interest to the last in the 
relief of his countrymen suffering for conscience' sake* 

When the refugees first entered the service of the 
Elector of Brandenburg, doubts were expressed whether 
they would fight against their former fellow-soldiers. 
When they went into action at Neuss, one of the 



* It was when on a visit at Strat- nearest surviving relative, and be- 
ton House, that the good Earl of Gal- came his heiress at the age of eighty- 
way was summoned to his rest. He four. The property of Stratton has 
probably sank under the "bodily passed out of Russell hands ; and Lord 
pains" to which he was so long sub- Galway 's gravestone [in Micheldever 
ject — namely, gout and rheumatism, churchyard, where he was buried 
His mind was entire to the last. He cannot now be recognised. — Agnew — 
died on the 3d of September 1720, Protestant Exiles from France in the 
aged seventy- two. He was the last reign of Louis XIV. p. 149. 
of his family. Lady Russell was his 



276 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. 



CHAP. XII. 



Prussian generals exclaimed, "We shall have these 
knaves fighting against us presently." But all doubts 
were dispelled by the conduct of the Huguenot mus- 
keteers, who rushed eagerly upon the French troops, 
and by the fury of their attack carried everything 
before them. It was the same at the siege of Bonn, 
where a hundred refugee officers, three hundred Hu- 
guenot cadets, with detachments of musketeers and 
horse grenadiers, demanded to be led to the assault ; 
and on the signal being given, they rushed forward 
with extraordinary gallantry. " The officers," says 
Ancillon, " gave proof that they preferred rather to rot 
in the earth after an honourable death, than that the 
earth should nourish them in idleness whilst their 
soldiers were in the heat of the fight." The outer 
works were carried, and the place was taken. But 
nowhere did the Huguenots display such a fury of 
resentment against the troops of Louis as at the battle 
of Almanza, above referred to, where they were led by 
Cavalier, the famous Camizard chief. 

Jean Cavalier was the son of a peasant, of the 
village of Eibaute, near Anduze, in Languedoc. Being 
an ardent Protestant, he took refuge from the persecu- 
tions, in Geneva and Lausanne, where he worked for 
some time as a journeyman baker. But his love for 
his native home drew him back to Languedoc ; and he 
happened to visit it in 1702, at the time when the 
Abbe du Chayla was engaged in directing the ex- 
tirpation of the Protestant peasantry in the Cevennes 
These poor people continued, in defiance of the law, tc 



CHAP. XII 



JEAN CA VALIER. 



277 



hold religious meetings in the woods, and caves, and 
fields; in consequence of which they were tracked, 
pursued, sabred, hanged, or sent to the galleys, where- 
ever found. 

The peasants at length revolted. From forty to 
fifty of the most determined among them assembled 
at the Abbe du Chayla s house at Pont-de-Montvert, 
and proceeded to break open the dungeon in which he 
had penned up a band of prisoners, amongst whom were 
two ladies of rank. The Abbe ordered his servants to 
repel the assailants with firearms ; nevertheless they 
succeeded in effecting an entrance, and stabbed the 
priest to death. Such was the beginning of the war 
of the Blouses, or Camizards. The Camizards were 
only poor peasants, driven to desperation by cruelty, 
without any knowledge of war, and without any arms 
except such as they wrested from the hands of their 
enemies. Yet they maintained a gallant struggle 
against the French armies for a period of nearly five 
years. 

On the outbreak of the revolt, Jean Cavalier assem- 
bled a company of volunteers to assist the Cevennes 
peasantry ; and before long he became their recognised 
leader. Though the insurrection spread over Lan- 
guedoc, their entire numbers did not exceed 10,000 
men. But they had the advantage of fighting in a 
mountain country, every foot of which was familiar to 
them. They carried on the war by surprises, clothing 
and arming themselves with the spoils they took from 
the royal troops. They supplied themselves with balls 



278 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. chap. xii. 



made from the church-bells. They had no money, and 
needed none ; the peasantry and herdsmen of the 
country supplying them with food. When they were 
attacked, they received the first fire of the soldiers on 
one knee, singing the sixty-eighth psalm — " Let God 
arise, let his enemies be scattered." Then they rose, 
precipitated themselves on the enemy, and fought 
with all the fury of despair. If they succeeded in 
their onslaughts, and the soldiers fled, they then held 
assemblies, which were attended by the Huguenots of 
the adjoining country ; and when they failed, they 
fled into the hills, in the caverns of which were their 
magazines and hospitals. 

Great devastation and bloodshed marked the course 
of the war of the Camizards. No mercy was shown 
either to the peasantry taken in arms or to those who 
in any way assisted them. Whole villages were de- 
stroyed; for the order was issued that wherever a soldier 
or priest perished, the place should immediately be 
burned down. The punishment of the stake was 
revived. Gibbets were erected and kept at work all 
over Languedoc. Still the insurrection was not sup- 
pressed ; and the peasantry continued to hold their 
religious meetings wherever they could. One day, on 
the 1st of April 1703, the intelligence was brought to 
Marshal Montrevil, in command of the royal troops, 
that some three hundred persons had assembled for wor- 
ship in a mill near Msmes. He at once hastened to 
the place with a strong force of soldiers, ordered the 
doors to be burst open, and the worshippers against 



CHAP. XII. 



WAR OF THE CAMIZARDS. 



279 



law slaughtered on the spot. The slowness with 
which the butchery was carried on provoked the 
marshal's indignation, and he ordered the mill to be 
fired. All who had not been murdered were burnt, — 
all, excepting one solitary girl, who was saved through 
the humanity of the marshal's lacquey ; but she was 
hanged next day, and her salvor narrowly escaped the 
same fate. 

Even this monstrous cruelty did not crush the in- 
surrection. The Camizards were from time to time 
reinforced by the burned-out peasants ; and, led by 
Cavalier and his coadjutor Koland, they beat the de- 
tachments of Montrevil on every side — at Nayes, at the 
rocks of Aubais, at Martignargues, and at the Bridge of 
Salindres. The " Most Christian King " was disgusted 
at the idea of a marshal of France, supported by a royal 
army completely appointed, being set at defiance by a 
miserable horde of Protestant peasants ; and he ordered 
the recal of Montrevil. Then Marshal Villars was sent 
to take the command. 

The new marshal was an honourable man, and no 
butcher. He shuddered at the idea of employing 
means such as his predecessor had employed to reduce 
the king s subjects to obedience ; and one of the first 
things he did was to invite Cavalier to negotiate. The 
quondam baker's boy of Geneva agreed to meet the 
potent marshal of France and listen to his proposals. 
Villars thus described him in his letter to the minister 
of war : " He is a peasant of the lowest rank, not yet 
twenty-two years of age, and scarcely seeming eighteen; 



280 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. chap, xii 



small, and with no imposing mien, but possessing a 
firmness and good sense that are altogether surprising. 
He has great talent in arranging for the subsistence of 
his men, and disposes his troops as well as the best 
trained officers could do. From the moment Cavalier 
began to treat up to the conclusion, he has always 
acted in good faith." 

In the negotiations which ensued, Cavalier stipu- 
lated for liberty of conscience and freedom of worship, 
to which, it is said Villars assented, though the Eoman 
Catholics subsequently denied this. The result, how- 
ever, was that Cavalier capitulated, accepted a colonel's 
commission, and went to Versailles to meet Louis XIV. ; 
his fellow-leader, Koland, refusing the terms of capitu- 
lation, and determining to continue the struggle. At 
Paris, the mob, eager to behold the Cevennol rebel, 
thronged the streets he rode through, and his reception 
was almost tantamount to a triumph. At Versailles 
Louis exhorted him in vain to be converted, Cavalier 
even daring in his presence to justify the revolt in the 
Cevennes. He was offered the rank of major-general 
in the French army, and a pension of 1500 livres for 
his father as the price of his apostasy ; but still he 
refused, and he was dismissed from court as " an ob- 
stinate Huguenot." 

Though treated with apparent kindness, Cavalier 
felt that he was under constant surveillance ; and he 
seized the earliest opportunity of flying from France 
and taking refuge in Switzerland. From thence he 
passed into Holland, and entered the service of Wil- 



CHAP. XII. 



CA VALIER AT ALMANZA. 



281 



liam of Orange, who gave him the rank of colonel. 
The Blouses, or Camizards, who had fled from the 
Cevennes in large numbers, flocked to his standard, 
and his regiment was soon full. But a difficulty arose. 
Cavalier insisted on selecting his own officers, whilst 
the royal commissioners required that all the com- 
panies should be commanded by refugee gentlemen. 
The matter was compromised by Cavalier selecting half 
his officers, and the commissioners appointing the other 
half, — Cavalier selecting only such as had thoroughly 
proved their valour in the battles of the Cevennes. 
The regiment, when complete, proceeded to England, 
and was despatched to Spain with other reinforcements 
at the end of 1706. 

Almost the only battle in which Cavalier and his 
Huguenots took part was on the field of Almanza, 
where they distinguished themselves in a remarkable 
degree. Cavalier found himself opposed to one of the 
French regiments, in whom he recognised his former 
persecutors in the Cevennes. The soldiers on both 
sides, animated by a common fury, rushed upon each 
other with the bayonet, disdaining to fire. The car- 
nage which followed was dreadful. The papist regi- 
ment was annihilated, while of Cavalier s regiment, 
700 strong, not more than 300 survived. Marshal 
Berwick, though familiar with fierce encounters, never 
spoke of this tragical event without deep emotion.* 
Cavalier himself was severely wounded, and lay for 
some time among the slain, afterwards escaping through 

* Weiss, p. 250. 



282 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. 



CHAP. XII. 



the assistance of an English officer. His lieutenant- 
colonel, five captains, six lieutenants, and five ensigns, 
were killed, and most of the other officers were wounded 
or taken prisoners. 

Cavalier returned to England, where he retired 
upon a small pension, which barely supported him, and 
he fell into debt * He entreated to be employed in 
active service, but it was not until after the lapse of 
many years that his application was successful. He 
was eventually appointed governor of Jersey, and held 
that office for some time ; after which he was made 
brigadier in 1735, and further promoted to be major- 
general in 1739. He died at Chelsea in the following 
year ; and his remains were conveyed to Dublin for in- 
terment in the French refugee cemetery near that city. 

Another illustrious name amongst the Huguenot 
refugees is that of Paul de Eapin-Thoyras, better 
known as the historian of England than as a soldier, 
though he bore arms with the English in many a hard- 
fought field. He belonged to a French noble family, 
and was lord of Thoyras, near Castres. The persecu- 
tion drove him and his familv into England : but find- 
ing nothing to do there, he went over to Holland and 
joined the army of William as a cadet. He accom- 
panied the expedition to Torbay, and took part in the 
transactions which followed. Eapin was afterwards sent 
into Ireland with his regiment; and, distinguishing 

* While lie resided in London, adventures, which were published 

Cavalier employed part of his leisure under the title of Memoirs of the Wars 

in dictating to another refugee, Galli of the Cevennes : London, 1726. 
of Msmes, the memoirs of his early 



CHAP. XII. 



RA FIX- THO YRAS. 



283 



himself by liis gallantry at the siege of C axiickf ergus, 
he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant He after- 
wards fought at the Boyne, and was wounded at the 
assault of limerick. At Athlone he was one of the 
first to enter the place at the head of the assailing 
force. He was there promoted to a company: and 
remained at Athlone doing garrison duty for about 
two years. His intelligence and high culture being 
well known. Eapin was selected by the king, on the 
recommendation of the Earl of Galway, as tutor to 
the Earl of Portland's eldest son, Viscount Woodstock. 
He accordingly took leave of the army with regret, 
making over his company to his brother 3 who after- 
wards attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel. From 
this time. Eapin lived principally abroad in company 
with his pupil. While residing at the Hague, he 
resumed his favourite study of history and juris- 
prudence, which had been interrupted by his flight 
from France at the Eevocation. After completing 
Lord Woodstock's education, Eapin settled at Wesel, 
where a number of retired refugee officers resided, 
and formed a very agreeable society. There he wrote 
his Dissertation on Whigs and Tories, and his well- 
known History of England, founded on Rhymer's 
Fcedera, a work of much labour and research, and long 
regarded as a standard work. Eapin died in 1725, at 
the age of sixty-four, almost pen in hand, worn out by 
hard study and sedentary confinement. 

Aniono- the manv able Husaienot officers in Wil- 
liams sendee, John de Bodt was one of the most 



284 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. 



CHAP. XII. 



distinguished. He had fled from France when only in 
his fifteenth year, and shortly after joined the Dutch 
artillery. He accompanied William to England, and 
was made captain in 1690. He fought at the Boyne 
and at Aughrim, and eventually rose to the command 
of the French corps of engineers. In that capacity he 
served at the battles of Steinkirk and Nerwinde ; and 
at the siege of Namur he directed the operations which 
ended in the surrender of the castle to the allied army. 
The fort into which Boufflers had thrown himself was 
assaulted and captured a few days later by La Cave, 
at the head of 2000 volunteers; and William III. 
generously acknowledged that it was mainly to the 
brave refugees that he owed the capture of that im- 
portant fortress. 

All through the wars in the Low Countries, under 
William III., Eugene, and the Duke of Marlborough, 
the refugees bore themselves bravely. Wherever the 
fighting was hardest, they were there. Henry de 
Chesnoi led the assault which gave Landau to the 
allies. At the battles of Hochstedt, Oudenarde, Mal- 
placquet, and at the siege of Mons, they were con- 
spicuous for their valour. Le Eoche, the Huguenot 
engineer, conducted the operations at Lisle, "doing 
more execution," says Luttrell, "in three days, than 
De Meer, the German, in six weeks." 

The refugee Ligoniers served with peculiar distinc- 
tion in the British army. The most eminent was Jean 
Louis afterwards Field Marshal Earl Ligonier, who fled 
from France into England in 1697. He accompanied 



CHAP. XII. 



LORD LIGOXIER. 



285 



the army to Flanders as a volunteer in 1 / 02. where his 
extraordinary bravery at the storming of Lieo-e attracted 
the attention of Marlborough. At Blenheim, where he 
next fought, he was the only captain of his regiment 
who survived. At Menin, he led the grenadiers who 
stormed the counterscarp. He fought at Malplacqiiet, 
where he was major of brigade, and in all Marlborough's 
great battles. At Dettingen, as lieutenant-general, he 
earned still higher distinction. At Fontenoy the chief 
honour was due to him for the intrepidity and skill 
with which he led the British infantry. In 1746 he 
was placed in command of the British forces in Flanders, 
but was taken prisoner at the battle of Lawneld. Ke- 
stored to England, he was appointed commander-in- 
chief and colonel of the First Foot Guards ; and in 1770 
the Huguenot hero died full of honours at the ripe age 
of liinety-two. 

Of the thousands of Protestant sailors who left 
France at the Revocation, many settled in the ports 
alono; the south and south-eastern coast of England ; 
but the greater number entered the Dutch fleet, while 
a portion took service in the navy of the Elector of 
Brandenburg. Louis XIV. took the same steps to 
enforce conversion upon his sailors that he did upon 
the other classes of his subjects; but so soon as the 
sailors arrived in foreign ports, they usually took the 
opportunity of deserting then ships, and thus reasserting 
their liberty. In 16S6 three French vessels, which had 
put into Dutch ports, were entirely deserted by their 
crews; and in the same year more than 800 experi- 



286 



THE HUGUENOT OFFICERS. chap. xii. 



enced mariners, trained under Duquesne, entered the 
navy of the United Provinces. When William sailed 
for England in 1688, the island of Zealand alone sent 
him 150 excellent French sailors, who were placed, as 
picked men, on board the admiral and vice-admiral's 
ships. Like their Huguenot fellow-countrymen on land, 
the Huguenot sailors fought valiantly at sea under the 
flag of their adopted country ; and they emulated the 
bravery of the English themselves at the great naval 
battle of La Hogue a few years later. Many of the 
French naval officers rose to high rank in William's 
service, and acquired distinction by their valour on 
that element which England has been accustomed to 
regard as peculiarly her own. Amongst these may be 
mentioned the G-ambiers, descended from a Huguenot 
refugee, one of whom rose to be a vice-admiral, and 
the other an admiral ; the latter having also been raised 
to the peerage for his distinguished public services. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



HUGUENOT SETTLERS IN ENGLAND — MEN OF SCIENCE 
AND LEARNING. 

Of the half-million of French subjects who were driven 
into exile by the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
more than 120,000 are believed to have taken refuge 
in England. The refugees were of all ranks and con- 
ditions — landed gentry, ministers of religion, soldiers 
and sailors, professional men, merchants, students, me- 
chanics, artizans, and labourers. The greater number 
were Calvinists, and continued such ; others were Lu- 
therans, who conformed to the English Church; but 
many were Protestants merely in name, principally 
because they belonged to families of that persuasion. 
But however lightly their family religion might sit 
upon them, these last offered as strenuous a resistance 
as the most extreme Calvinists to being dragooned 
into popery. This was especially the case with 
men of science, professional men, and students of 
law and medicine. Hence the large proportion of 
physicians and surgeons to be found in the ranks of 
the refugees. 

It was not merely free religious thought that Louis 
XIV. sought to stifle in France, but free thought of all 
kinds. The blow struck by him at the conscience of 



288 



HUGUENOT LITER A TI. 



CHAP. XIII. 



France, struck also at its mind. Individualism was 
crushed wherever it asserted itself. An entire abnega- 
tion of the will was demanded. Men must abjure their 
faith, and believe as they were ordered. They must 
become part of a stereotyped system — profess adherence 
to a church to which they were indifferent, if they did 
not actually detest it — pretend to believe what they 
really did not believe, and in many cases even deny 
their most deeply-rooted convictions. 

To indolent minds such a system would no doubt 
save an infinity of trouble. Once induce men to give 
up their individuality, to renounce the exercise of their 
judgment, to cease to think, and entertain the idea 
that a certain set of men, and no other, held in their 
hands the keys of heaven and hell, and conformity 
became easy. But many of the French king s subjects 
were of another temperament. They would think for 
themselves in matters of science as well as religion; 
and the vigorous, the independent, and the self-reliant 
— Protestant as well as non-Protestant — revolted against 
the intellectual tyranny which Louis attempted to 
establish amongst them, and fled for liberty of thought 
and worship into other lands. 

We have already referred to such men as Huyghens 
and Bayle, who took refuge in Holland, and there 
found the freedom denied them in their own country. 
These men were not Protestants so much as philoso- 
phers. But they could not be hypocrites, and they would 
not conform. Hence they fled from France. Others 
of like stamp took refuge in England. Amongst these 



CHAP. XIII. 



DE CA US AND PAPIN. 



289 



latter were some of the earliest speculators as to that 
wonderful motive power which eventually became 
embodied in the working steam-engine. One of these 
fugitives was Solomon de Caus, a native of Caux in 
Normandy. He was a man of encyclopaedic knowledge. 
He studied architecture in Italy, and was an engineer, 
a mechanic, and a natural philosopher. Moreover, he 
was a Huguenot, which was fatal to his existence in 
France as a free man, and he took refuge in England. 
There he was employed about the court for a time, and 
amongst other works designed and erected hydraulic 
works for the palace gardens at Eichmond. Shortly 
after, he accompanied the Princess Elizabeth to Heidel- 
berg, in Germany, on her marriage to the Elector Pala- 
tine, and there he published several works descriptive 
of the progress he had made in his inquiries as to the 
marvellous powers of steam. 

But still more distinguished among the Huguenot 
refugees was Dr. Denis Papin, one of the early inventors 
of the steam-engine, and probably also the inventor of 
the steamboat. He was born at Blois in 1650, and 
studied medicine at the University of Paris, where he 
took his degree as physician. He began the practice 
of his profession, in which he met with considerable 
success ; but being attracted to the study of mechanics, 
and having the advantage of the instruction of the 
celebrated Huyghens, he made rapid progress, and 
promised to become one of the most eminent scientific 
men of his country. But Papin was a Protestant; and 

when the practice of medicine by Protestant physicians 

IT 



290 



HUGUENOT LITERATI. 



CHAP. XIII. 



came to be subjected to serious disabilities/" finding the 
door to promotion or even to subsistence closed against 
him unless he abjured, Papin determined to leave 
France : and in 1681, the same year in which Huyghens 
took refuge in Holland, Papin took refuge in England. 
Arrived in London, he was cordially welcomed by the 
men of science there, and especially by the Honourable 
Eobert Boyle, under whose auspices he was introduced 
to the Eoyal Society. 

In the year of his arrival in London, Papin pub- 
lished a work descriptive of his new digester, which 
excited considerable interest. By means of this digester 
— in which the heat of the water was raised much 
above the boiling-point by preventing the escape of 
the steam — Papin was enabled to extract all the 
nutritious matter from the bones of animals, which had 
until then been thrown away as useless. The Fellows 
of the Eoyal Society had a supper cooked by the 
digester, of which Evelyn gives an account in his 
diary. The king commanded a digester to be made 
for Whitehall; and the invention shortly came into 
general use. In the preface to the second edition of 
his work, Papin announces that he "will let people 



* In 1680, Protestant lawyers and tlie magistrates were required to visit 
medical men were declared excluded the sick, with, or without a priest, and 
from holding any public employment ; ask them if they would abjure. Pro- 
and in the following year, physicians, testant midwives were absolutely for- 
surgeons, and others, called to assist bidden to exercise their vocation, 
the sick of the Keformed religion, were ''because they did not believe bap- 
commanded to give notice thereof tism to be necessary, and could not 
under penalty of a fine of five hundred christen children on emergency." 
livres ; and on the notice being given, 



1AP. XIII. 



DEXIS PAP IX. 



291 



see the Machines tryd once a-week, in Blackfriars, in 
Water Lane, at Mr. Boissonet's [doubtless another 
Huguenot refuge e_, over against the Blew Boot, every 
Monday at three of the clock in the afternoon ; but to 
avoid confusion and crowding in of unknown people, 
those that will do nie the honour to come, are desired 
to bring along with them a recommendation from any 
of the members of the Eoyal Society." 

In 16 54, Papin was appointed temporary curator 
of the Boyal Society, with a salary of £30 a-year. 
It formed pan of his duty, in connection with his new 
office, to produce an experiment at each meeting of 
the society ; and this led him to prosecute his inquiries 
into the powers of steam, and ultimately to invent his 
steam-engine.* Papin's reputation having extended 
abroad, he was invited to fill the office of professor of 
mathematics in the University of Marburg, which he 
accepted : and he left England in the year 1657. But 
he continued, until his death, many years later, to 
maintain a friendly correspondence with his scientific 
friends in England : and one of the last things he did 
was to construct a model steam-engine fitted in a boat 
— "une petite machine dun vaisseau a roues" — for the 
purpose of sending it over to England for trial on the 
Thames. t But, unhappily for Papin. the little vessel 



* For an account of Solomon de 
Cans, as well as of the life and labours 
of Dr. Papin, see " Historical ilenioir 
of the Invention of the Steam-Engine," 
given in the Lives of Boulton. and 
Watt, pp. 8, 30-8. 



•f* "It is important," he wrote to 
Leibnitz, on the 7th July 1707, 
'•'that my new construction of vessel 
should be put to the proof in a sea- 
port like London, where there is 
depth enough to apply the new in- 



292 



HUG UENO T LITER A TI. chap, xm . 



never reached England. To his great grief, he found 
that when it had reached as far as Miindeii on the 
Weser, it was seized by the boatmen of the river and 
barbarously destroyed. Three years later, the illus- 
trious exile died, worn out by work and anxiety, leaving 
it to other inventors to realise the great ideas he had 
conceived as to locomotion by steam-power. 

Dr. Desaguliers was another refugee who achieved 
considerable distinction in England as a teacher of 
mechanical philosophy. His father, J ean des Aguliers, 
was pastor of a Protestant congregation at Aitre, near 
Rochelle, from which he fled about the period of the 
Eevocation. His child, the future professor, is said to 
have been carried on board the ship by which he 
escaped, concealed in a barrel.* The pastor first took 
refuge in Guernsey, from whence he proceeded to Eng- 
land, took orders in the Established Church, and be- 
came minister of the French chapel in Swallow Street, 
London. This charge he subsequently resigned, and 
established a school at Islington, at which his son re- 
ceived his first education. From thence the young 
man proceeded to Oxford, matriculating at Christ 
Church, where he obtained the degree of B.A., and 
took deacons orders. Being drawn to the study of 

vention, which, "by means of fire, will The Shuttle worths were related by- 
render one or two men capable of marriage to the Desaguliers family ; 
producing more effect than some hun- Robert Shuttleworth, one of the suc- 
dreds of rowers." cessors to Gawthorpe, having married 
* The statement is made in the Anne, the second daughter of General 
" House and Farm Accounts of the Desaguliers (son of the above Dr. 
Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall " — Desaguliers), who was one of the 
Ohetham Society s Papers, 1856-8. equerries of George III. 



CHAP. XIII. 



DR. DESA G ULIERS. 



293 



natural philosophy, he shortly after began to deliver 
lectures at Oxford on hydrostatics and optics, to which 
he afterwards added mechanics. 

- His fame as a lecturer having reached London, 
Desaguliers was pressingly invited thither ; and he 
accordingly removed to the metropolis in 1713. His 
lectures were much admired, and he had so happy a 
knack of illustrating them by experiments, that he was 
invited by the Eoyal Society to be their demonstrator. 
He was afterwards appointed Curator of the Society ; 
and in the course of his connection with it communi- 
cated a vast number of curious and valuable papers, 
which were printed in the transactions. The Duke of 
Chandos gave Desaguliers the church living of Edge- 
ware ; and the king (before whom he gave lectures at 
Hampton Court) presented him with a benefice in 
Essex, besides appointing him chaplain to the Prince 
of Wales. 

In 1734 Desaguliers published his Course of Ex- 
perimental Philosophy in two quarto volumes — the 
best book of the kind that had until then appeared in 
England. It would appear from this work that the 
doctor also designed and superintended the erection of 
steam-engines. Eeferring to an improvement which 
he had made on Savery's engine, he says — " According 
to this improvement, I have caused seven of these fire- 
engines to be erected since the year 1717 or 1718. 
The first was for the late Czar Peter the Great, for 
his garden at Petersburg, where it was set up." Dr. 
Desaguliers died in 1749, leaving behind him three 



294 



HUGUENOT LITERATI. 



CHAP. XIII. 



sons, one of whom, the eldest, published a translation 
of the Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, 
by Gravesande, who had been a pupil of his father s ; 
the second was a beneficed clergyman in Norfolk ; and 
the third was a colonel of artillery and lieutenant- 
general in the army, as well as equerry to George III. 

Among other learned refugees who were elected 
members of the Eoyal Society, were David Durand, 
the editor of Pliny s Natural History, Hie Philoso- 
phical Writings of Cicero, and other classical works, 
and the author of a History of the Sixteenth Century, 
as well as of the continuation of Eapins History of 
England ; Peter des Maiseaux, the intimate friend of 
Saint Evremonde, whose works he edited and translated 
into English ; and Abraham de Moivre, the celebrated 
mathematician. 

De Moivre was the son of a surgeon at Vitry in 
Champagne, and received his principal education at 
the Protestant seminary of Sedan. From the first, he 
displayed an extraordinary genius for arithmetic ; and 
his chief delight in his bye-hours was to shut himself 
up with Le Gendre's arithmetic and work out its prob- 
lems. This led one of his classical masters to ask on 
one occasion " What that little rogue meant to do with 
all these cyphers V When the college of Sedan was 
suppressed in 1681, De Moivre went to Saumur to 
pursue his studies in philosophy there, and afterwards 
to Paris to prosecute the study of physics. By this 
time his father, being prohibited practising as a sur- 
geon because of his religion, left Vitry to join his 



CHAP. XIII. 



ABRAHAM DE MOIVRE. 



295 



son at Paris ; but they were not allowed to remain 
long together. The agents of the government, acting 
on their power of separating children from their parents 
and subjecting them to the process of conversion, seized 
young De Moivre in his nineteenth year, and shut him 
up in the priory of St. Martin. There his Jesuit masters 
tried to drill him into the Eoman Catholic faith ; but 
the young Protestant was staunch, and refused to be 
converted. Being pronounced an obstinate heretic, he 
was discharged after about two years' confinement, on 
which he was ordered forthwith to leave the country. 

De Moivre arrived in London with his father* in 
1687, at the age of twenty, and immediately bestirred 
himself to earn a living. He had no means but his 
knowledge and his industry. He first endeavoured to 
obtain pupils, to instruct them in mathematics ; and 
he also began, like others of the refugees, to give lec- 
tures on natural philosophy. But his knowledge of 
English was as yet too imperfect to enable him to 
lecture with success, and he was, besides, an indifferent 
manipulator, so that his lectures were shortly discon- 
tinued. It happened that the Principia of Newton 
was published about the time that De Moivre arrived 
in England. The subject offering great attractions 
to a mind such as his, he entered upon the study of 
the book with much zest, and succeeded before long in 
mastering its contents and arriving at a clear under- 



* We find, from the Lists of Foreign Daniel de Moivre obtained letters of 
Protestants, published by the Camden naturalisation on the 16th of Decern - 
Society (1862), that Abraham and ber 1687. 



296 



HUGUENOT LITERATI. 



CHAP. XJ1I. 



standing of the views of the author. So complete was 
his knowledge of Newton's principles, that it is said, 
when Sir Isaac was asked for explanations of his 
writings, he would say — " Go to De Moivre ; he knows 
better than I do." 

Thus De Moivre acquired the friendship and re- 
spect of Newton, of Halley, and the other distinguished 
scientific men of the time ; and one of the best illus- 
trations of the esteem in which his intellectual qualifi- 
cations were held, is afforded by the fact that in the 
contention which arose between Leibnitz and Newton 
as to their respective priority in the invention of the 
method of fluxions, the Eoyal Society appointed De 
Moivre to report upon their rival claims. 

De Moivre published many original works on his 
favourite subject, more particularly on analytical mathe- 
matics. Professor De Morgan has observed of them, 
that " they abound with consummate contrivance and 
skill ; and one, at least, of his investigations has had 
the effect of completely changing the whole character 
of trigonometrical science in its higher departments.""* 
One of the works published by him, entitled The Doe- 
trine of Chances, is curious, as leading, in a measure, to 
the development of the science of life assurance. From 
the first edition it does not appear that De Moivre in- 
tended to do more than illustrate his favourite theory 
of probabilities. He showed in a variety of ways the 
probable results of throwing dice in certain numbers of 
throws. From dice-throwing he proceeded to lotteries ? 

* Art. "De Moivre" in Penny Cyclopaedia. 



chap. xiii. ABRAHAM DE MOIVRE. 



297 



and showed how many tickets ought to be taken to 
secure the probability of drawing a prize. A few years 
later he applied his views to a more practical purpose — 
the valuation of annuities on lives ; and though the 
data on which he based his calculations were incorrect, 
and his valuations consequently unreliable, the pub- 
lication of his Doctrine, of Chances, applied to the 
valuation of annuities on lives, was of much use at the 
time it appeared; and it formed the basis of other 
and more accurate calculations. 

De Moivre's books were on too abstruse subjects to 
yield him much profit, and during the later years of his 
life he had to contend with poverty. It is said that he 
derived a precarious subsistence from fees paid him 
for solving questions relative to games of chance and 
other matters connected with the value of probabilities. 
He frequented a coffee-house in St. Martin's Lane, of 
which he was one of the attractions ; and there his cus- 
tomers sought him to work out their problems. The 
occupation could not have been very tolerable to such 
a man ; but he was growing old and helpless in body, 
and his power of calculating was his only capital. He 
survived to the age of eighty-seven, but during the last 
month of his life he sank into a state of total lethargy. 
Shortly before his decease the Academy of Berlin elected 
him a member. The French Academy of Sciences also 
elected him a foreign associate ; and on the news of his 
death reaching Paris, M. de Fouchy drew up an elo- 
quent eloge of the exiled Huguenot, which was duly 
inserted in the records of the Academy. 



298 



HUGUENOT LIT ERA TL 



CHAP. XIII. 



For the reasons above stated, the number of refugee 
physicians and surgeons who sought the asylum of 
England was very considerable. Many of them settled 
to practise in London and other towns in the south, 
while others obtained appointments in the army and 
navy. Weiss says it was to the French surgeons espe- 
cially that England was in a great measure indebted 
for the remarkable perfection to which English surgical 
instruments arrived. The College of Physicians in 
London generously opened their doors to the admission 
of their foreign brethren. Between the years 1681 and 
1 6 8 9 we find nine French physicians admitted, amongst 
whom we observe the name of the eminent Sebastian 
le Fevre.* One of the members of the same family 
subsequently settled in Spitalnelds as a silk-manu- 
facturer, from whom the late Speaker of the House of 
Commons, now Viscount Eversley, is lineally descended. 

Among the literary men of the emigration were the 
brothers Du Moulins — Louis, for some time Camden 
professor of history at Oxford, and Peter, prebendary 
of Canterbury — both authors of numerous works ; 
Henry Justel, the learned secretary to Louis XIV, who 
sold off his valuable library and fled to England some 
years before the Eevocation, when he was appointed 
king s librarian ; Peter Anthony Motteaux, an excellent 
linguist, whose translations of Cervantes and Eabelais 

* The family were of long and enii- of the same family, "was appointed 

nent standing in Anjou as medical chemist to Charles II., with a fee of 

men. Joshua le Fevre obtained letters £150 a-year. — Dubkant Coopee — 

of naturalisation in 1681 ; but before Lists of Foreign Protestants, p. xxvi. 
that date Mcasius le Fevre, a member 



CHAP. XIII. 



REFUGEE AUTHORS. 



299 



first popularised the works of those writers in this 
country ; Maximilian Misson, author of A Neiv Voyage 
to Italy, Theatre Sacre des Gevennes, and other works ; 
Michel de la Roche, author of the Memoirs of Litera- 
ture, and A Literary Journal, which filled up a con- 
siderable gap in literary history;* Michel Maittaire, 
M. A. Oxon, one of the masters of Westminster School, 
an able philologist, the author of several learned works 
on typography as well as theology ; De Souligne, grand- 
son of Du Plessis Mornay (the Huguenot leader), author 
of The Desolation of France demonstrated, The Political 
Mischiefs of Popery, and other works ; John Gagnier, 
the able Orientalist, professor of Oriental languages at 
Oxford University, and the author of many learned 
treatises on Rabbinical lore and kindred subjects ; John 
Cornaud de la Croze, author of the Bibliotheque Univer- 
selle, The Works of the Learned, and The History of 
Learning ; Abel Boyer, the annalist, author of the 
well-known French and English Dictionary, who pur- 
sued a successful literary career in England for nearly 



* In his Literary Journal De la 
Eoche says, " I was very young when 
I took refuge in England, so that most 
of the little learning I have got is of 
an English growth. . . . Tis in this 
country I have learned to have a right 
notion of religion, an advantage that 
can never be too much valued. Being 
a studious man, it was very natural to 
me to write some hooks, which I have 
done, partly in English and partly in 
French, for the space of twenty years. 
The only advantage I have got by them 
is that they have not been unaccept- 



able, and I hope I have done no dis- 
honour to the English nation by those 
French books printed beyond sea, in 
which I undertook to make our English 
learning better known to foreigners 
than it was before. I have said just 
now that I took refuge in England. 
When I consider the continual fear I 
was in for a whole year, of being dis- 
covered and imprisoned to force me to 
abjure the Protestant religion, and the 
great difficulties I met with to make 
my escape, I wonder I have not been 
a stupid man ever since." 



300 



HUGUENO T LITERA TL chap. xiii. 



forty years ; Mark Anthony de la Bastide, author of 
several highly-esteemed controversial works ; and Gra- 
verol of Nismes, one of the founders of the academy of 
that city, a poet and jurisconsult, who published in 
London a history of his native place, addressed to 
" Messieurs les Eefugies de Mmes qui sont etablis dans 
Londres." The last pages of this book contain a touch- 
ing narrative of the sufferings of the Protestants of 
Languedoc, and it concludes as follows : : — " We, who 
are in a country so remote from our own only for the 
sake of Gods Word, and for the testimony of Jesus 
Christ, let us study to render our confession and our 
faith glorious by discreet and modest conduct, by an 
exemplary life, and by entire devotion to the service of 
God. Let us ever bear in mind that we are the sons 
and the fathers of martyrs. Let us never forget this 
glory, but strive to transmit it to our posterity."* 

But the most eminent of the refugees were un- 
questionably the pastors, some of whom were men 
highly distinguished for their piety, learning, and 
eloquence. Such were Abbadie, considered one of the 
ablest defenders of Christianity in his day ; Saurin, one 
of the most eloquent of preachers ; Allix, the learned 
philologist and historian, and Delange, his colleague ; 
Pineton, author of Les Larmes de Chambrun, cha- 
racterised by Michelet as " that beautiful but terrible 
recital f Du Moulin, Drelincourt, Marmet, and many 
more. 

Jacques Abbadie was the scion of a distinguished 

* Weiss, p. 267. 



CHAP. XIII. 



DR. ABBADIE. 



301 



Bearnese family. After completing his studies at Sedan 
and Saunmr, he took his doctor s decree at the age of 

' © © 

Seventeen. While still a young man, he was invited to 
take charge of the French church in Berlin, to which 
he acceded : and his reputation served to attract 
large numbers of refugees to that city. His Treatise 
on the Truth of the Christian Religion greatly increased 
his fame, not only at Berlin but in France and through- 
out Europe. Madame de Sevigne, though she rejoiced 
at the banishment of the Huguenots, spoke of it in a 
high strain of panegyric as the most olivine of all books : 
" I do not believe/ 5 she said, " that any one ever spoke 
of religion like this man ! " Even Bussy Babutin, who 
scarce passed for a believer, said of it — " We are read- 
ing it now, and we think it the only book in the world 
worth reading." A few years later, Abbadie published 
his Treatise on the Divinity of Jesus Christ. It is so 
entirely free from controversial animus, that the 
Boman Catholics of France even hoped to win him 
over to their faith, and they held out their hand to 
help him within their pale. But they only deceived 
themselves. For, on the death of the elector, Abbadie, 
instead of returning to France, accompanied his friend 
Marshal Sehomberg to Holland and afterwards to Eno- 

© O 

land in the capacity of chaplain. He was with the 
marshal during his campaigns in Ireland, and suffered 
the grief of seeing his benefactor fall mortally wounded 
at the Boyne. Beturning to London, Abbadie became 
attached as minister to the church of the Savoy, where 
crowds flocked to his preaching. While holding this 



302 HUG UENO T LITERA TI. chap. xiii. 

position, he wrote his Art of Knowing Ones-self, in 
which he powerfully illustrated the relations of the 
human conscience to the duties inculcated by the Gos- 
pel. He also devoted his pen to the cause of William 
III., and published his Defence of the British Nation, 
in which he justified the deposition of James II. and 
the revolution of 1688, on the ground of right and 
morality. In 1694 he was selected to pronounce the 
funeral oration of Queen Mary, wife of William III. — 
a sermon containing many passages of great eloquence ; 
shortly after which he entered the English Church, and 
was appointed to the deanery of Killaloe, in which 
office he ended his days. 

Jacques Saurin was the greatest of the Protestant 
preachers. He was the son of an advocate at Msmes, 
whose three sons all took refuge in England — Jacques, 
the pulpit-orator; Captain Saurin, an officer in Wil- 
liam's army; and Louis, some time minister of the 
French church in the Savoy, and afterwards Dean of 
St. Patrick's, Ardagh."* Jacques Saurin was, in the 
early part of his life, tempted to the profession of arms ; 
and when only seventeen years of age he served as an 
ensign in the army of Savoy, under the Marquis de 
Ruvigny, Earl of Calway. Returning to his studies at 
Geneva, he prepared himself for the ministry; and 
having proceeded to England in 1 701, he was appointed 
one of the ministers of the French church in Thread- 



* From him were lineally descended able William Saurin, Attorney- General 
the Eight Eeverend James Saurin, for Ireland from 1807 to 1821. 
Bishop of Dromore, and the Honour- 



CHAP. XIII. 



SA URIN AND ALLIX. 



303 



needle Street. He held that office for four years, after 
which he was called to the Hague, and there developed 
that talent as a preacher for which he became so dis- 
tinguished. He was made minister-extraordinary to 
the French community of nobles, and held that office 
until his death. " Nothing," says Weiss, " can give an 
idea of the effect produced by his inspired voice, which 
for twenty-five years resounded beneath the vaulted 
roof of the temple at the Hague, unless it be the pro- 
found veneration and pious worship with which the 
memory of the great orator, continually revived by the 
perusal of his writings, has remained surrounded in 
Holland."* 

Scarcely less distinguished was Peter Allix, for 
some time minister of the great Protestant church at 
Charenton, near Paris, and afterwards of the temple of 
the French Hospital in Spitalfields, London. His style 
of preaching was less ornate, but not less forcible, than 
that of Saurin. His discourses were simple, clear, and 
persuasive. The great object at which he aimed was the 
enforcement of union among Protestants. Louis XIV. 
tried every means to induce him to enter the Eoman 
Catholic Church, and a pension was offered him if, in 
that case, he would return to France. But Allix re- 
sisted all persuasions, and died in exile. His great 
erudition was recognised by the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge, who conferred upon him the degree 
of doctor of divinity ; and, on the recommendation of 
Bishop Burnet, he was made canon and treasurer of 

* Weiss, p. 397. 



304 



HUGUENOT LITERATI. 



CHAP. XIII. 



Salisbury Cathedral. Allix left behind him many pub- 
lished works, which in their time were highly esteemed. 

Jacques Pineton was another of the refugee pastors 
who illustrated his faith by his life, which was pure 
and beautiful. He had personally suffered more than 
most of his brethren, and he lived to relate the story 
of his trials in his touching narrative entitled Les 
Larmes de Ghambrun. He was pastor of a Protestant 
church in the village of that name, situated near Avig- 
non, in the principality of Orange, when the district 
was overrun by the troops of Louis XIV. The dragon- 
nade was even more furiously conducted there than 
elsewhere, because of the hatred entertained by the 
king towards the Protestant prince who took his title 
from the little principality. The troops were under 
the command of the Count of Tesse, a ferocious and 
profane officer. Pineton was laid up at the time by 
an attack of gout, the suffering from which was aggra- 
vated by the recent fracture of a rib which he had 
sustained. As he lay helpless on his couch, a party 
of forty-two dragoons burst into his house, entered his 
chamber, lit a number of candles, beat their drums 
round his bed, and filled the room with tobacco-smoke, 
so as almost to stifle him. They then drank until 
they fell asleep and snored; but their officers entering, 
roused them from their stupor by laying about amongst 
them with their canes. While the men were asleep, 
Pineton had urged his wife to fly, which she attempted 
to do, but she was taken in the act and brought before 
Tesse, who brutally told her that she must regard her- 



CHAP. XIII. 



JACQUES PINE TON. 



305 



self as the property of the regiment. She fell at his 
feet distracted, and would have been lost, but that a 
priest, to whom Pineton had rendered some service, 
offered himself as surety for her. The priest, however, 
made it a condition that she and her husband should 
abjure their religion ; and, in a moment of agony and 
despair, they succumbed. Eemorse immediately fol- 
lowed, and they determined to take the first oppor- 
tunity to fly. Upon the plea that Pineton, still in great 
pain, required surgical aid, he obtained leave to proceed 
to Lyons. He was placed in a litter, the slightest 
movement of which caused him indescribable pain. 
When the people saw him carried away, they all wept, 
Catholic as well as Protestant. Even the dragoons 
were moved. The sufferer contrived to reach Lyons, 
where he was soon cured and convalescent. It ap- 
peared that the frontier was less strictly guarded near 
Lyons; and with the assistance of a friend, Pineton 
shortly after contrived to escape in the disguise of a 
general officer. He set out in a carriage with four 
horses, attended by a train of servants in handsome 
liveries. At the bridge of Beauvoisin, where a picket 
of dragoons was posted, he was allowed to cross with- 
out interruption, the soldiers having previously been 
informed that "my lord" was a great officer travelling 
express into Switzerland. There was, however, still 
the frontier-guard of the Duke of Savoy to pass. It 
commanded the great road across the Alps, and was 
maintained for the express purpose of preventing the 

flight of refugees. By the same bold address, and 

x 



306 



HUG UENO T LITER A TI. 



CHAP. XIII. 



feigning great indignation at the guard attempting to 
obstruct his passage, Pineton was allowed to proceed, 
and shortly after reached Chambery. Next morning 
he entered the French gate of Geneva, giving expres- 
sion to his feelings by singing the eighth verse of the 
twenty-sixth Psalm — 

" Que j'aime ce saint lieu 
On Tu parois, mon Dieu," etc. 

Madame Pineton was less fortunate in her flight. 
She set out for the Swiss frontier accompanied by 
three ladies belonging to Lyons. The guides whom 
they had hired and paid to conduct them had the bar- 
barity to desert them in the mountains. It was winter. 
They wandered and lost their way. They were nine 
hours in the snow. They were driven away from Car- 
don, and were pursued along the Ehone. The Lyons 
ladies, vanquished by cold, fatigue, and hunger, wished 
to return to Lyons and give themselves up ; they could 
endure no longer. But Madame Pineton hoped that 
by this time her husband had reached Geneva, and she 
found courage for them all. She would not listen to 
the proposal to go back ; she must go forward ; and 
the contest ended in their proceeding, and arriving at 
last at Geneva, and finding there safety and liberty. 
The pastor Pineton, after remaining for a short time in 
that city, proceeded towards Holland, where he was 
graciously received by the Prince of Orange. Having 
been appointed one of the Princess's chaplains, he ac- 
companied Mary to London, and was appointed a canon 
of Windsor. He did not, however, live long to enjoy 



CHAP. XIII. 



OXFORD GRADUATES. 



307 



that dignity, for he died in 1689, the year after his 
arrival in England ; though he lived to give to the 
world the touching narrative- of his adventures and 
sufferings.'" 

Many of the most distinguished of the French pas- 
tors were admitted to degrees in the Universities of 
Oxford and Cambridge,! and several, besides the above, 



* Those who would know the whole 
details of this exciting story must 
refer to Les Larmes de Jacques Pineton 
de Chanibrun, qui contiennent les Per- 
secutions arrivees aux Eglises de la 
Principaute & Orange clepuis 1660, la 
chute et le relevement de VAuteur, avec 
le retablissement de S. Pierre en son 
Apostolat sur les Paroles de notre 
Seigneur Jesus Christ, scion S. Jean, 
scxi. 14, recently re-published at Paris 
by Meyrueis. 

+ Among the learned foreigners men- 
tioned by Anthony Wood, in his Athena 
Oxaniensis, as having been admitted 
to the University of Oxford in acknow- 
ledgment of their learning, may be 
named the following : — 
1625. John Verneuil, M.A. Oxford 
(formerly of the University 
of Montauban). 
1625-6. Thomas Levet, Bachelor of 
Civil Law, Oxford (formerly 
of the University of Orleans). 
1638. Daniel Brevint, M.A. Oxford 
(formerly of the University 
of Saumur). 
1648-9. Abraham Stuard, M.D. Ox- 
ford (formerly of the Uni- 
versity of Caen). 
1619. Louis du Moulin, M.D. Ox- 
ford and Cambridge (son of 
the French Protestant pastor 
Pierre du Moulin, and edu- 



cated at the University of 
Ley den). 

1655. LudovicdeLambermont,M.D. 

Oxford (formerly of the Uni- 
versity of Valence). 

1656. Pierre du Moulin, D.D. Ox- 

ford and Cambridge (brother 
of the above - mentioned 
Louis). 

1656-7. Theophilus de Garencieres, 
M.D. Oxford (formerly ot 
the University of Caen). 

1656. Pierre Vasson, M.B. Oxford. 
1656-7. Abraham Conyard, Bachelor 

of Divinity, Oxford (formerly 
of the University of Eouen). 

1676. Stephen le Moine, D.D. Ox- 
ford (formerly of Rouen, and 
subsequently Professor of 
Theology at Leyden). 

1682-3. Samuel de l'Angle, D.D. Ox- 
ford (formerly of Rouen and 
Paris). 

1685. James le Prix, D.D. Ox- 

ford (formerly Professor of 
Divinity in the University 
of Saumur). 

1686. Rene Bertheau, D.D. Oxford 

(former] y of the University 
of Montpelier). 
1686-7. James d'Allemagne, D.D. 

Oxford (a French minister 
of the Protestant Church). 

1657. Elias Boherel, Bachelor of 



308 



HUGUENOT LITERATI. 



CHAP. XII 



held benefices in the English Church. In 1682, when 
the learned Samuel de 1' Angle was created D.D. of 
Oxford without payment of the customary fees, he was 
conducted into the House of Convocation by the king's 
professor of divinity, and all the masters stood up to 
receive him. De r Angle had been the chief preacher 
in the church of Charenton, near Paris ; and after 
thirty-five years of zealous work there, he fled from 
France with his family to end his days in England. 
He was afterwards made Prebendary of Canterbury and 
Westminster. Peter Drelincourt, son of the famous 
French divine, whose work on Death* has been trans- 
lated into nearly all the languages of Europe, was an- 
other refugee who entered the church, and became 
Dean of Armagh ; and Dr. Hans de Veille, a man of 
great learning, having also entered the church, was 
made library-keeper at Lambeth Palace by Dr. Tillot- 
son, then Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Though many of the most eminent French minis- 
ters joined the Established Church of England, others 
equally learned and able became preachers and profes- 
sors among the Dissenters. "While Pierre du Moulin was 
a Prebendary of Canterbury, his brother Louis was a 
stout Presbyterian. Charles Marie du Veil, originally a 



Civil Law, Oxford (formerly (formerly of tlie University 

of the University of Samnur). of Saumur), etc. etc. etc. 

1689. John Mesnard, D.D. Oxford * Les Consolations de I'Ame fidelU 

(formerly minister of Char- contre les Frayeurs de la Mori has been 

enton, and subsequently printed more than forty times in 

chaplain to William III.) French, and manj T times in England 

16S9. John Deffray, M.A. Oxford in its translated form. 



chap. xiii. CAPELL AND BERTHEAU. 



309 



Jew, was first converted to Eoman Catholicism, next 
to Protestantism, and ended by becoming a Baptist 
minister. Brit the most eminent of the refugees who 
joined the dissenters was the Eeverend James Capell, 
who had held the professorship of Hebrew in the 
University of Saumur at the early age of nineteen. 
He fled into England shortly after the Eevocation, and 
in 1 708 he accepted a professor's chair at the Dissenters' 
College in Hoxton Square. There he long continued to 
teach the Oriental languages and their critical applica- 
tion in the study of the Scriptures ; and he performed 
his duties with such distinguished ability that the in- 
stitution came to enjoy a very high repute. Many of 
the ablest ministers of the next generation, churchmen 
as well as dissenters, studied under Mr. Capell, and 
received from him their best education. He held the 
office for fourteen years, and died at eighty-three, the 
last of his family. 

Of the ministers of the French churches in London, 
besides those already named, the most distinguished 
were the Eeverend Charles Bertheau, minister of the 
French church in Threadneedle Street, who officiated 
in that capacity with great ability for a period of forty- 
six years ; the Eeverend Henri Chatelain, minister of 
the French church in St. Martin's Lane ;* the Eeverend 



* Henri Chatelain was the great- 
grandson of Simon Chatelain, the 
famous Protestant manufacturer of 
gold and silver lace. This lace was 
a much-prized article. It procured 
for the steadfast Huguenot the toler- 
ation of his religion, in which he was 



zealous from the fifteenth year of his 
age to the eighty-fifth, which was his 
last. He died in 1675, leaving more 
than eighty descendants, who all paid 
fines for openly attending his funeral. 
— Agnew — French Protestant Exiles, 
237. 



310 



HUGUENOT LITERATI. 



CHAP. XIII. 



Csesar Pegorier, minister of the Artillery and the Taber 
nacle churches, and author of numerous controversial 
works ; the Eeverend Henri Rochblave, minister of the 
refugee church at Greenwich, and afterwards of the 
French Chapel-Royal, St. James ; the Eeverend Daniel 
Chamier, minister of the French church in Leicester- 
fields ; and the Reverend Jean Graverol, minister of the 
French churches of Swallow Street and the Quarre, a 
voluminous and eloquent writer. The Reverend Antoine 
Peres (formerly professor of Oriental languages in the 
University of Montauban) and Ezekiel Marmet were 
ministers of other French churches, and were greatly 
beloved — Marmet's book of meditations on the words 
of Job, " I know that my Redeemer liveth," being prized 
by devout readers of all persuasions. 

The Reverend Claude de la Mothe and J ean Armand 
du Bourdieu were ministers of the French church in the 
Savoy, the principal West-end congregation, frequented 
by the most distinguished of the refugees. Both these 
ministers were eminent for their learning and their 
eloquence. The former was of a noble Huguenot 
family named Grostete, and studied law when a 
youth at Orleans, his native city, where he took the 
degree of Doctor of Civil Law. He was also a member 
of the Royal Society of Berlin. He practised for some- 
time at Paris as an advocate, but subsequently changed 
law for divinity, and was appointed pastor of the church 
at Lisy in 1675. At the Revocation he fled to England 
with his wife, and was appointed one of the ministers 
of the church in the Savoy. He was the author of 



CIIAP. XIII. 



ARMAND DU BOURDIEU. 



311 



numerous works, which enjoyed a high reputation in 
their day, and besides devoted much of his spare time to 
correspondence, with the object of obtaining the release 
of Protestant martyrs from the French galleys. 

Jean Armand du Bourdieu, the colleague of De la 
Mothe, though celebrated as a preacher, was still more 
distinguished as an author. Like himself, his father 
was a refugee divine, and preached in London until his 
ninety-fifth year. Jean Armand had been pastor of a 
church at Montpellier, which he left on the Eevocation, 
and came into England, followed by a large number of 
his flock. He was chaplain to the three dukes of 
Schomberg in succession, and was by the old duke's 
side when he fell at the Boyne. In 1707, he preached 
a sermon in London, which was afterwards published, 
wherein he alluded to Louis XIV. as a Pharaoh to the 
oppressed Protestants of France. The French king 
singled him out from the many refugee preachers in 
England, and demanded, through his minister, that he 
should be punished. Louis' complaint was formally 
referred to the Bishop of London — the French church 
in the Savoy being under his jurisdiction — and Du 
Bourdieu was summoned before his Grace at Fulham 
Palace to answer the charge. After reading and con- 
sidering the memorial of the French ambassador, the 
pastor was asked what he had to say to it. He re- 
plied that " during the war he had, after the example 
of several prelates and clergymen of the Church of 
England, preached freely against the common enemy 
and persecutor of the church ; and the greatest part of 



312 



HUG UENO T LITER A TI. 



CHAr. XIII. 



his sermons being printed with his name affixed, he 
was far from disowning them ; but since the proclama- 
tion of the peace [of Utrecht], he had not said any- 
thing that did in the least regard the French king." 
No further steps were taken in the matter. 

Du Bourdieu continued indefatigably active on 
behalf of his oppressed brethren in France during the 
remainder of his life. His pen was seldom idle, and 
his winged words flew abroad and kept alive the in- 
dignation of the Protestant north against the persecu- 
tors of his countrymen. In 1717 he published two 
works, one " A Vindication of our Martyrs at the Gal- 
leys;" another, "A Comparison of the Penal Laws of 
France against Protestants with those of England 
against Papists;" and, in the following year, "An 
Appeal to the English Nation." He was now an old 
man of seventy; but his fire burned bright until the 
last. Two years later he died, beloved and lamented 
by all who knew him."* 

There is little reason to doubt that the earnestness, 
eloquence, and learning of this distinguished band of 
exiles for conscience' sake exercised an influence, not 
only on English religion and politics, but also on Eng- 
lish literature, which continues to operate until this day. 

* A great-grandson of Du Bourdieu, French commandant, who said, on 

Captain Saumarez Dubourdieu, was presenting it — "My misfortune is 

an officer in the British army at the the lighter, as I am conquered by a 

capture of Martinique from the French Dubourdieu, a beloved relative. My 

in 1762, and received the sword of the name is Dubourdieu ! " 



CHAPTEE XIV. 



HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND — MEN OF 
INDUSTRY. 

We now come to the immigration and settlement in 
England of Huguenot merchants, manufacturers, and 
artisans, which exercised a still greater influence on 
English industry than the immigration of French 
literati and divines did upon English literature. 

It is computed that about 100,000 French manufac- 
turers and workmen fled into England in consequence 
of the Eevocation, besides those who took refuge in 
Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. When the Hu- 
guenot employers shut up their works in France, their 
men usually prepared to follow them. They converted 
what they could into money, whatever the loss might 
be, and made for the coast, accompanied by their 
families. The paper-makers of Angoumois left their 
mills ; the silk-makers of Touraine left their looms, and 
the tanners their pits ; the vine-dressers and farmers of 
Saintonge, Poitou, and La Eochelle, left their vine- 
yards, their farms, and their gardens, and looked out 
into the wide world, seawards, for a new home and a 
refuge, where they might work and worship in peace. 
The principal emigration into England was from 



314 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



Normandy* and Brittany. Upwards of 10,000 of the 
industrial class left Eouen ; and several thousand per- 
sons, principally engaged in the maritime trade, set out 
from Caen, leaving that city to solitude and poverty. 
The whole Protestant population of Coutances emi- 
grated, and the fine linen manufactures of the place 
were at once extinguished. There was a similar flight 
of masters and men from Efboeuf, Alencon, Caudebec, 
Havre, and other northern towns. The makers of 
noyal and white linen cloths, for which a ready market 
had been obtained abroad, left Nantes, Eennes, and 
Morlaix in Brittany, and Le Mans and Laval in 
Maine, and went over to England to carry on their 
manufactures there. The provinces further north also 
contributed largely to swell the stream of emigration 
into England : the cloth-makers departed from Amiens, 
Abbeville, and Doullens ; the gauze-makers and lace- 
makers from Lille and Valenciennes ; and artizans of all 
kinds from the various towns and cities of the interior. 

Notwithstanding the precautions taken by the French 
government, and the penalty of death, or the galleys 
for life, to which those were subject who were taken 
in the act of flight, the emigration could not be stopped. 
The fugitives were helped on their way by their fellow- 
Protestants, and often by the Eoman Catholics them- 
selves, who pitied their sad fate. The fugitives lay 
concealed in barns and farmyards by day, and travelled 

* Floquet, the accredited historian advantage of the vicinity of the sea, 

of Normandy {Histoire du Parlement and of their connection with Eng- 

de Normandie), calculates that not land and Holland, to abandon their 

less than 184,000 Protestants took country. 



chap. xiv. RICH AND POOR FUGITIVES. 



315 



by night towards the coast. There the maritime popu- 
lation, many of whom were Protestants like themselves, 
actively connived at their escape. France presented 
too wide a reach of sea-frontier, extending from Bayonne 
to Calais, to be effectively watched by any guard ; and 
not only the French, but the English and Dutch mer- 
chant-ships, which hovered about the coast waiting for 
the agreed signal to put in and take on board their 
freight of fugitives, had usually little difficulty in carry- 
ing them off in safety. 

Of those fugitives who succeeded in making good 
their escape, the richest took refuge in Holland ; while 
the bulk of those who settled in England were persons 
of comparatively small means. Yet a considerable sum 
of ready money must have been brought by the refugees, 
as we find the French ambassador writing to Louis 
XIV. in 1687, that as much as 960,000 louis dors had 
already been sent to the Mint for conversion into Eng- 
lish money.* This was, however, the property of a 
comparatively small number of the more wealthy fami- 
lies, for the greater proportion of those who landed in 
England were altogether destitute. 

Steps were immediately taken for the relief of the 
poorer immigrants. Collections were made in the 
churches ; public subscriptions were raised ; and Parlia- 

* Many of the refugees were eminent coming to Great Britain, and that, 

merchants and manufacturers, and did one with another, they brought £60 

undoubtedly bring along with them each in money or effects, whereby they 

much money and effects. I have seen added three millions sterling to the 

a computation, at the lowest supposi- wealth of Britain. — Macpherson — 

tion, of only 50,000 of those people Annals of Commerce, ii. 617. 



316 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



ment voted considerable sums from the public purse. 
Thus a fund of nearly £200,000 was collected, and 
invested for the benefit of the refugees, — the annual 
interest, about £15,000, being intrusted to a com- 
mittee for distribution among the most necessitous ; 
while about £2000 a-year was applied towards the 
support of the poor French ministers and their respec- 
tive churches. The pressure on the relief fund was 
of course the greatest in those years immediately fol- 
lowing the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes, before 
the destitute foreigners had been able to maintain them- 
selves by their respective callings. There was also a 
large number of destitute landed gentry, professional 
men, and pastors, to whom the earning of a livelihood 
was even more difficult; and these also had to be 
relieved out of the fund. 

From the first report of the French Eelief Committee, 
dated December 1687 — that is, only fourteen months 
after the Eevocation — it appears that 15,500 refugees 
had been relieved in the course of the year. " Of these," 
says Weiss, " 13,050 were settled in London, and 2000 
in the different seaport towns where they had disem- 
barked. Amongst them the committee distinguishes 
140 persons of quality with their families ; 143 minis- 
ters ; 144 lawyers, physicians, traders, and burghers. 
It designates the others under the general denomination 
of artizans and workmen. The persons of quality 
received weekly assistance in money throughout the 
whole of that year. Their sons were placed in the 
best commercial houses. About 150 of them entered 



chap. xiv. THE REFUGEES GENEROUSLY HELPED. 317 



the army, and were provided, at the cost of the com- 
mittee, with a complete outfit. The ministers obtained 
for themselves and their families pensions which were 
regularly paid. Their sons found employment in the 
houses of rich merchants or of persons of quality. 
Weekly assistance was granted to the sick, and to those 
whose great age prevented them earning their own 
living by labour. The greater part of the artizans and 
workmen were employed in the English manufactories. 
The committee supplied them with the necessary imple- 
ments and tools, and provided, at the same time, for 
all their other wants. Six hundred of them, for whom 
it could not find employment in England, were sent at 
its cost to America. Fifteen French churches were 
erected out of the proceeds of the national subscription 
— three in London, and twelve in the various counties 
where the greater number of the refugees had settled."* 
The help thus generously given to the distressed 
refugees by the nation was very shortly rendered in a 
great measure unnecessary by the vigorous efforts which 
they made to help themselves, t They sought about in 



* Weiss — History of the French 
Protestant Refugees, p. 224. 

f The emigration from France, how- 
ever, did not come to an end until about 
the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Every revival of religious persecution 
there, was followed by a fresh influx of 
fugitives into England. In 1718, the 
Rev. J. A. Dubourdieu, one of the 
ministers of the Savoy church, pub- 
lished An Appeal to the English 
Nation, in vindication of the body of 



the French Protestants against the 
calumnies of one Mallard and his as- 
sociates, as to the alleged misapplica- 
tion of the national bounty. It appears 
that the number of poor foreign Pro- 
testants relieved out of the fund in 
that year was 5194. M. Dubourdieu 
says — " There are some among the 
refugees who, having been over here 
twenty or thirty years, have by their 
industry and labour maintained them- 
selves without being burthensome to 



318 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



all directions for employment, and being ingenious, 
intelligent, and industrious, they gradually succeeded in 
obtaining it. They were satisfied with small gains, pro- 
vided they were honestly come by. French work-people 
are better economists than English, and less sufficed 
for their wants. They were satisfied if they could keep 
a roof over their heads, a clean fireside, and th&pot-au- 
feu going. What English artizans despised as food, 
they could make a meal of. For they brought with 
them from France the art of cooking — the art of econo- 
mising nutriment and at the same time presenting it in 
the most savoury forms — an art almost entirely unknown 
even at this day in the homes of English workmen, 
and a source of enormous national waste. Before the 
arrival of the refugees, the London butchers sold their 
bullocks' hides to the fellmongers, always with the tails 
on. The tails were thrown away and wasted. Who 



any one ; others who, not being bred 
to work for their living, brought over 
a small matter with them, and spent 
it by degrees. Both these being over- 
come by age and infirmities, and in- 
capable of doing anything for them- 
selves, are obliged to have recourse to 
this beneficence. The number of these 
is certainly very great, and^is further 
increased by those that come daily 
from France, more especially since the 
last peace ; these come destitute of 
everything. There are persons of all 
ages and degrees among them. The old 
and infirm persons must be relieved ; 
and as for those that are young and in 
a condition to work, they want some 
assistance to put them forward, and 
enable them to get their livelihood 



some way or other." It is further 
incidentally mentioned, that " there 
are 80 ministers who, with their fami- 
lies, are partakers of the charity, be- 
sides 60 ministers' widows who have 
a charge of children. " Further on, the 
writer says : ' 1 There are but two 
French churches in this city [London] 
that are able to give £100 a-year to 
their ministers, and but four in all 
that can maintain the ministry with- 
out some allowance out of the royal 
benefaction." At the head of the 
French Committee were, it is stated, 
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 
Bishop of London. The total num- 
ber of "French refugees," M. Dubour- 
dieu then estimated at " near 100,000 
persons in the two kingdoms." 



chap. xiv. REFUGEE BENEFIT SOCIETIES. 319 

would ever dream of eating ox-tails ? The refugees 
profited by the delusion. They obtained the tails, 
enriched their pots-au-feu with them, and revelled in 
the now well-known delicacy of ox-tail soup. 

The refugees were also very helpful of one another. 
The richer helped the poorer, and the poor helped 
each other. The Marquis de Euvigny almost kept 
open house, and was equally ready to open his purse to 
his distressed countrymen. Those who had the means 
of starting manufactories and workshops employed as 
many hands as they could ; and the men who earned 
wages helped to support those who remained unem- 
ployed. Being of foreign birth, and having no claim 
upon the poor-rates, the French artizans formed them- 
selves into societies for mutual relief in sickness and 
old age. These were the first societies of the kind 

o 

established by workmen in England, though they have 
since been largely imitated;* and the Oddfellows, 
Foresters, and numerous other benefit societies of the 
labouring class, though they may not know it, are but 
following in the path long since tracked out for them 
by the French refugees. 

The working-class immigrants very soon settled 



* One of the oldest of the French 
benefit societies was the "Norman 
Society" of Bethnal Green, which 
only ceased to exist in 1863, after a 
life of upwards of 150 years. Down 
to the year 1800, the whole of the 
society's accounts were kept in 
French, the members being the de- 
scendants of French Protestants, 



mostly bearing French names ; but 
at length the foreign element became 
so mixed with the English that it 
almost ceased to be recognisable, and 
the society may be said to have died 
out with the absorption of the dis- 
tinctive class for whose benefit it was 
originally instituted. 



320 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



down to the practice of their respective callings in 
different parts of the country. A large proportion of 
them settled in London, and several districts of the 
metropolis were almost entirely occupied by them. 
Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, and Soho were the principal 
French quarters, where French was spoken in the 
workshops, in the schools and churches, and in the 
streets. But the immigrants distributed themselves in 
other districts — many of them settling in Aldgate, 
Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, and the quarter adjoining 
Thames Street. A little colony of them settled in one 
of the streets leading from Broad Street to the Guild- 
hall, which came to be called " Petty France," from the 
number of French who inhabited it. Others settled in 
Long Acre, the Seven Dials, and the neighbourhood of 
Temple Bar. Le Mann, the famous biscuit-maker, 
opened his shop and nourished near the Boyal Exchange. 
Some opened shops for the manufacture and sale of 
cutlery and mathematical and surgical instruments in 
the Strand ; while others began the making of watches, 
the fabrication of articles in gold and silver, and the 
cutting and mounting of jewellery, in which the French 
artizans were then admitted to be the most expert in 
Europe. 

France had long been the leader of fashion, and all 
the world bought dress and articles of vertu at Paris. 
Colbert was accustomed to say that the fashions were 
worth more to France than the mines of Peru were to 
Spain. Only articles of French manufacture, with a 
French name, could find purchasers amongst people of 



CHAP. XIV. 



TRADE IN FRENCH GOODS. 



321 



fashion in London. " The fondness of the nation for 
French Commodities was such," said Joshua Gee, "that 
it was a very hard matter to bring them into love 
with those made at home."* Another writer, Mr. 
Samuel Fortrey, describing the international trade be- 
tween England and France in 1663, set forth the great 
disadvantages at which the English manufacturers 
were then placed, and how seriously the balance of 
trade was against England. Goods to the amount of 
above two and a half millions sterling were annually 
imported from France, whereas the value of English 
goods exported thither did not amount to a million. 
" The chief manufactures amongst us at this day," said 
he, " are only woollen cloths, woollen stuffs of various 
sorts, stockings, ribandings, and perhaps some few silk 
stuffs, and some other small things, scarce worth the 
naming ; and those already mentioned are so decayed 
and adulterated, that they are almost out of esteem 
both at home and abroad." 

The principal articles imported from France pre- 
vious to that time were velvets and satins from Lyons; 
silks and taffetas from Tours; silk ribands, galloons, 
laces, gloves, and buttons from Paris and Eouen; 
serges from Chalons, Bheims, Amiens, and various 
towns in Picardy; beaver and felt hats from Paris, 
Eouen, and Lyons ; paper of all sorts from Auvergne, 
Poitou, Limousin, Champagne, and Normandy; iron- 
mongery and cutlery from Forrests, Auvergne ; linen 
cloth from Brittany and Normandy ; salt from Bochelle 

* Joshua Gee — The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain considered. 

Y 



322 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



and Oleron, Isle of Khe ; wines from Gascony, Nantes, 
and Bordeaux ; and feathers, fans, girdles, pins, needles, 
combs, soap, aquavitse, vinegar, and various sorts of 
household stuffs, from different parts of France.* 

So soon as the French artizans settled in London, 
they proceeded to establish and carry on the manu- 
factures which they had practised abroad ; and a large 
portion of the stream of gold which before had flowed 
into France, now flowed into England. They intro- 
duced all the manufactures connected with the fashions, 
so that English customers became supplied with 
French-made articles without requiring to send abroad 
money to buy them; while the refugees obtained a 
ready sale for all the goods they could make, at remu- 
nerative prices. " Nay," says a writer of the time, " the 



* The following are the items as 
given by Mr. Fortrey in his Account 
of Trade between Great Britain, France, 
Spain, etc. 1663 : — 
Velvets, satins, etc. made 

at Lyons £150,000 

Silks, taffetas, and other 

articles made at Tours . 300,000 
Silk ribands, galloons, 

laces, and buttons, made 

at Paris, Eouen, etc. . 150,000 
Serges, made at Chalons, 

Rheims, Amiens, Creve- 

coeur, and towns in Pi- 

cardy 150,000 

Beaver and felt hats, made 

at Paris, Rouen, and 

Lyons 120,000 

Feathers, fans, girdles, etc. 150,000 
Pins, needles, tortoiseshell 

combs, etc 20,000 



Gloves, made at Paris, 

Rouen, etc. £10,000 

Paper of all sorts, made in 
Auvergne, Poitou, Li- 
mousin, Champagne, and 
Normandy 100,000 

Ironmongery wares, made 

in Forrests, Auvergne, etc. 40, 000 

Linen cloth, made in Brit- 
tany and Normandy . . 400,000 

Household stuff, such as 
beds, mattresses, cover- 
lets, hangings, fringes, 
etc 100,000 

Wines from Gascony, Nantes, 

Bordeaux, etc 600,000 

Aquavitse, Vinegar, etc. . 100,000 

Soap, honey, almonds, olives, 

prunes, etc 160,000 

500 or 600 vessels of salt from 
Rochelle, Oleron, Isle of Rhe, etc. 



chap. xiv. FRENCH MANUFACTURES INTRODUCED. 323 



English have now so great an esteem for the workman- 
ship of the French refugees, that hardly anything vends 
without a Gallic name."* The French beavers, which 
had before been imported from Caudebec in France, 
were now made in the borough of Southwark and at 
Wandsworth, where several hat-makers began their 
operations on a considerable scale, t Others introduced 
the manufacture of buttons of wool, silk, and metal, 
which before had been made almost exclusively in 
France. The printing of calicoes was introduced by a 
refugee, who established a manufactory for the purpose 
near Eichmond. Other print-works were started at 
Bromley in Essex, from whence the manufacture was 
afterwards removed into Lancashire. A French refugee 
named Passavant purchased the tapestry-manufactory 
at Fulham, originally established by the Walloons, 
which had greatly fallen into decay. His first attempts 
at reviving the manufacture not proving successful, he 



* History of the Trade in England : 
London, 1702. 

+ Hat-making was one of the most 
important manufactures taken into 
England by the refugees. In France 
it had been almost entirely in the 
hands of the Protestants. They alone 
possessed the secret of the liquid com- 
position which serves to prepare rabbit, 
hare, and beaver skins, and they alone 
supplied the trade with fine Caudebec 
hats in such demand in England and 
Holland. After the Eevocation, most 
of them went to London, taking with 
them the secret of their art, which 
was lost to France for more than forty 



years. It was not until the middle of 
the eighteenth century that a French 
hatter named Mathieu, after having 
long worked in London, stole the 
secret the refugees had carried away, 
took it back to his country, generously 
communicated it to the Paris hatters, 
and founded a large manufactory in 
the Faubourg St. Antoine. Before 
this lucky larceny, the French nobility, 
and all persons making pretensions to 
elegance in dress, wore none but Eng- 
lish hats ; and the Roman cardinals 
themselves got their hats from the 
celebrated manufactory at Wandsworth 
established by the refugees. — Weiss 
p. 260. 



324 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



removed the works to Exeter, and eventually made 
them prosper with the assistance of some workmen 
whom he obtained from the Gobelins at Paris. 

But the most important branch of manufacture to 
which the refugees devoted themselves, and in which 
they achieved both fame and wealth, was the silk-manu- 
facture in all its branches. The silk fabrics of France — 
its satins, brocades, velvets, paduasoys, figured and 
plain — were celebrated throughout the world, and were 
eagerly purchased. As much as 200,000 livres worth 
of black lustrings were bought by the English annually, 
made expressly for their market, and known as "English 
taffeties." Shortly after the Eevocation, not only was 
the whole of this fabric made in England, but large 
quantities were manufactured for exportation abroad. 

The English government had long envied France 
her possession of the silk-manufacture, which gave em- 
ployment to a large number of her people, and was a 
great source of wealth to the country. An attempt 
was made in the reign of Elizabeth to introduce the 
manufacture in England, and it was repeated in the 
reign of James I. The king issued instructions to the 
deputy-lieutenants of counties, that they should require 
the landowners to purchase and plant mulberry-trees for 
the feeding of silkworms ; and he granted a licence for 
twenty-one years to one- William Stallenge to print a book 
of instructions for their guidance.* It appears that M. 



* Domestic Papers, James I. , Jan- berrie trees and the breeding of silke- 
uaiy 5, 1607. The book was entitled wormes for the making of silk in this 
Instructions for the increasing of mul- kingdom, whereunto is annexed His 



CHAP. XIV. 



THE SILK-MANUFACTURE. 



325 



de Verton, Sieur de la Forest, commissioned by the 
king, travelled all over the midland and eastern counties 
selling-mulberry trees at a low fixed price (6s. the 
hundred), and giving directions as to their cultivation.'" 
The corporation of the city of London also encouraged 
the first attempts at introducing the manufacture ; and 
we find from their records that in 1609 they admitted 
to the freedom of the city one Kobert Therie or Thierry, 
on account of his skill and invention, and as " being 
the first in England who hath made stuffs of silke, the 
which was made by the silk-worms nourished here in 
England." t One M. Brumelach was also invited over 
from France, with sundry silk-throwsters, weavers, and 
dyers, and thus a beginning was made in the manufac- 
ture ; but it was not until the influx of the Protestant 
refugees after the Eevocation that the manufacture 
took root and began to flourish. 

The workmen of Tours and Lyons brought with 



Majesty's letter to the Lord,- Lieutenants, 
etc. : 4to, London, 1609. 

* Doubts seem to have been enter- 
tained as to the ability of the Sieur de 
la Forest, on which he addressed the 
Earl of Salisbury in a "remonstrance 
against a suspicion of his ability to 
fulfil his contract for the supply of 
mulberry -trees." He stated that he 
"had in France a nursery of 500,000 
trees," and detailed the pains he had 
taken in sending for them and induc- 
ing the people to buy, by showing 
them spinners of silk at work. Do- 
megtic Papers, James I., 1609, 110. 
The remonstrance is in French. 

+ The corporation were not alike 



liberal in other cases ; for we find 
them, in the same year in which they 
admitted Thierry a freeman and citizen, 
expelling one John Cassell ' ' for using 
the trade or art of twisting worsted 
yarn in Bartholomew Within, in the 
liberties of the city, he being no free- 
man, but a stranger born, contrary to 
the custom of the city. It is therefore 
thought fit, and so ordered by this 
court, that Mr. Chamberlain shall 
forthwith shut up the shop-windows 
of the said John CasseLL's shop, and 
shall remove within a month all his 
goods, furniture, etc., to other places, 
which he promised to do." — Corpora- 
tion Records, 1609. 



326 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



tliem the arts which had raised the manufactures of 
France to such a height of prosperity. They erected 
their looms in Spitalfields, and there practised their im- 
proved modes of weaving, — turning out large quantities 
of lustrings, velvets, and mingled stuffs of silk and 
wool, of such excellence as to insure for them every- 
where a ready sale. Weiss says that the figured silks 
which proceeded from the London manufactories were 
due almost exclusively to the skill and industry of three 
refugees — Lanson, Mariscot, and Monceaux. The artist 
who supplied the designs was another refugee named 
Beaudoin. A common workman named Mongeorge 
brought them the secret, recently discovered at Lyons, 
of giving lustre to silk taffety ; and Spitalfields thence- 
forward enjoyed a large share of the trade for which 
Lyons had been so famous.* 

To protect the English manufactures, the import 
duties on French silks were at first trebled. In 
1692, five years after the Eevocation, the manufacturers 
of lustrings and alamode silks were incorporated by 
charter under the name of the Eoyal Lustring Com- 
pany ; shortly after which, they obtained from Parlia- 
ment an Act entirely prohibiting the importation of 
foreign goods of like sorts. Strange to say, one of the 
grounds on which they claimed this degree of protection 
was, that the manufacture of these articles in England 
had now reached a greater degree of perfection than 
was attained by foreigners — a reason which ought to 
have rendered them independent of all legislative inter- 

* Weiss, 253. 



CHAP. XIV. 



SILK STOCKING TRADE. 



327 



ference in their favour. Certain it is, however, that 
by the end of the century the French manufacturers in 
England were not only able to supply the whole of the 
English, demand, but to export considerable quantities 
of their goods to those countries which France had 
formerly supplied. 

One of the most remunerative branches of business 
was the manufacture of silk stockings,"* in which the 
English shared with the French artizans. This trade 
was due to the invention of the stocking-frame by 
William Lee, M.A., about the year 1600. Not being 
able to find any encouragement for his invention in 
England, he went over to Eouen in 1605, on the invi- 
tation of the French minister Sully, to instruct the 
French operatives in the construction and working of 
the machine. Nine of the frames were in full work, 
and Lee enjoyed the prospect of honour and compe- 
tency, when, unhappily for him, his protector, Henry 
IV., was assassinated by the fanatic Eavaillac. The 
patronage which had been extended to him was at once 
withdrawn, on which Lee proceeded to Paris to press 
his claims upon the government. But he had the 
misfortune to be a foreigner, and, worse than all, a 

* The first pair of silk stockings stockings. Silk stockings were equally 

brought into England, from Spain, was rare things in the royal court of 

presented to Henry VIII., who highly Scotland, for it appears that before 

prized them. In the third year of Eliza- James VI. received the ambassadors 

beth's reign, her tiring-woman, Mrs. sent to congratulate Mm on his acces- 

Montague, presented her with a pair sion to the English throne, he re- 

of black silk stockings as a New Year's quested one of the lords of his court 

gift ; whereupon her Majesty asked if to lend him his pair of silken hose, 

she could have any more, in which that he "might not appear as a 

case she would wear no more cloth scrub before strangers." 



328 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



Protestant; so his claims were disregarded, and he 
shortly after died at Paris in extreme distress. 

Two of Lee's machines were left at Kouen ; the rest 
were brought over to England ; and in course of time 
considerable improvements were made in the invention. 
The stocking-trade became so considerable a branch of 
business, that in 1654 we find the framework-knitters 
petitioning Oliver Cromwell to grant them a charter of 
incorporation. The memorialists set forth the great 
utility of the knitting-frame, its exquisite workman- 
ship, and the value of the materials it turned out. 
" Not only," say they, " is it able to serve your High- 
ness's dominions with the commodities it mercantably 
works, but also the neighbouring countries round about, 
where it has gained so good repute that the vent thereof 
is now more foreign than domestic, and has drawn 
covetous eyes upon it, to undermine it here, and to 
transport it beyond the seas."''" The Protector did not 
grant the prayer of the framework-knitters that he 



* The memorialists refer to the two 
stocking-frames of Lee's construction 
left at Eouen, with their workmen, 
and say — " Of the two which re- 
mained in France, only one is yet 
surviving ; but so far short of the 
perfection of his trade (as it is used 
here), that of him, or what can be 
done by him, or his means, these 
petitioners are in no apprehension of 
fear." The petitioners go on to ascribe 
to Divine Providence the good for- 
tune that has hitherto attended their 
labours, and congratulate themselves 
on having concealed their mystery 



from " the nimble spirits of the 
French, the fertile wits of the Italians, 
and the industrious inclination of the 
Dutch." Their commercial success, 
they add, "has vindicated our nation 
against that old proverbial expression, 
The stranger buys of the Englishman 
the case of the Fox for a groat, and sells 
him the tail again for a shilling; for 
we may now invert the saying, and 
retort that the Englishman buys silk 
of the stranger for twenty marks, and 
sells him the same again for one hun- 
dred pounds " 



chap. xiv. THE SILK-MANUFACTURE. 



329 



would confer on them the monopoly of manufacture 
which they sought ; accordingly, when the French re- 
fugees settled amongst us, they were as free to make 
use of Lee's invention as the English themselves were. 
Hence the manufacture of silk hosiery by the stocking- 
frame shortly became a leading branch of trade in 
Spitalfields, and English hose were in demand all over 
Europe. Keysler, the traveller, writing as late as 1 730, 
remarks that " at Naples, when a tradesman would 
highly recommend his silk stockings, he invariably 
protests that they are right English." 

In a petition presented to Parliament by the 
weavers' company in 1713, it was stated that owing 
to the encouragement afforded by the Crown and by 
divers Acts of the legislature, the silk-manufacture at 
that time was twenty times greater in amount than it 
had been in 1664 ; that all sorts of black and coloured 
silks, gold and silver stuffs, and ribands, were made 
here as good as those of French fabric ; that black 
silk for hoods and scarfs, which, twenty-five years 
before, was all imported, was now made here to the 
annual value of £300,000, whereby a great increase 
had been occasioned in the exportation of woollen and 
other manufactured goods to Turkey and Italy, whence 
the raw silk was imported. Such, amongst others, 
were the effects of the settlement in London of the 
French refugee artizans. 

Although the manufacture of glass had been intro- 
duced into England before the arrival of the French 
refugees, it made comparatively small progress until 



330 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



they took it in hand. The first glass-work in London 
was begun by a Venetian, in Crutched Friars Hall, in 
1564, after which two Flemings, driven over by the 
persecutions in the Low Countries, started a second 
glass-work at Greenwich in 1567;"" but Mr. Pellatt, 
in his lecture on the manufacture of glass, delivered 
before the Eoyal Institution, attributes the establish- 
ment of the manufacture to the French Protestant 
refugees, most of the technical terms still used in 
glass-making being derived from the French, t Thus, 
the " found " is the melting of the materials into glass, 
from the French word fondre. The "siege" is the 
place or seat in which the crucible stands. The 
" kinney n is the corner of the furnace, probably from 



* See Appendix I. — Immigration 
of Flemish and other foreign artizans 
into England. 

f It appears, from documents in 
the State Paper Office {Bom. Eliz. 
9th August 1567) that two refugees, 
Antoine Bequer and Jean Quarre, 
petitioned the queen for permission 
to establish works for the making of 
all such sort of table-glass as was 
then brought into England "out of 
Burgundy, Lorrayne, and France." 
They offered to pay the same duties 
as were levied on foreign glass, and 
to bind themselves "to retain En- 
glishmen in their service, and teach 
them the art of making glass," pro- 
vided only they were not required to 
retain more than were found needful 
for the purpose of the manufacture. 
The privilege sought was granted by 
the queen for twenty-one years ; and 



the two first furnaces were required 
to be erected and set to work within 
a year from the date of the grant. 
Bequer and Quarre appear to have 
commenced their operations within 
the stipulated period, for we find that 
on the 6th September 1568 they 
memorialised the queen for permis- 
sion to cut wood to make charcoal, 
in Windsor Great Park, and to convey 
it from thence to their glass-factory. 
This application, most probably, was 
unsuccessful, for nearly six years later 
the Bishop of Chichester incidentally 
mentions, in one of his letters (25th 
April 1574) to the Lord Treasurer 
Burghley, that there was "a com- 
bination to rob the French glass- 
makers ; " and it would seem that they 
had established themselves in Sussex, 
which in the 16th century was one 
of the most wooded counties in 
England. 



CHAP. XIV. 



REFUGEE GLASS-MAKERS. 



331 



coin or cheminee. The "journey," denoting the time 
of making glass from the beginning of the " found," is 
obviously from journee. The " foushart," or fork used 
to move the sheet of glass into the annealing-kiln, is 
from fourchette. The "manure" is the slab, formerly 
of marble, but now of iron, on which the ball of hot 
glass is rolled. And so on with "cullet" (coale — 
glass run off, or broken glass), "pontil" (point ee), and 
other words obviously of French and Flemish origin. 

The first French glass-makers who came into Eng- 
land began their operations in Savoy House in the 
Strand ; but they afterwards removed into Sussex, be- 
cause of the greater conveniency of finding fuel ; and 
the art made such progress there, and in other parts of 
England, that Evelyn in his Diary spoke of the glass 
blown in this country as being " of finer metal than 
that of Murano at Venice." The Parisian glass-makers 
were especially celebrated for the skill with which they 
cast large plates for mirrors; and, shortly after the 
Eevocation, when a large number of these valuable 
workmen took refuge in England, a branch of that 
manufacture was established by Abraham Thevenart, 
which proved highly successful. Other works were 
started for the making of crystal, in which the French 
greatly excelled ; and before long, not only were they 
able to supply the home market, but to export large 
quantities of glass wares of various sorts to Holland 
and other European countries. 

For the improvement of the English paper-manu- 
facture also, we are largely indebted to the refugees — 



332 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



to the Protestant employers and artizans who swarmed 
over to England from the paper-mills of Angoumois. 
Before the Kevocation, the paper made in this country 
was of the common " whitey-brown" sort — coarse and 
inelegant. All the best sorts were imported from 
abroad, mostly from France. But shortly after the Ke- 
vocation, the import of paper ceased, and the refugees 
were able to supply us with as good an article as could 
be bought elsewhere. The first manufactory for fine 
paper was established by the refugees in London in 
1685 ; but other mills were shortly after started by 
them in Kent, — at Maidstone and along the Darent, — 
as well as in other parts of England.* That the leading 
workmen employed in the first fine paper-mills were 
French and Flemish is shown by the distinctive terms 
of the trade still in use. Thus, in Kent, the man who 
lays the sheets on the felts is the coucher ; the fate- 
man, or vatman, is the Flemish fassman ; and the 
room where the finishing operations are performed is 
still called the salle. 

One of the most distinguished of the refugee paper- 
manufacturers was Henry de Portal. The Portals were 



* The Patent Office records clearly 
show the activity of the French exiles 
in the province of invention, in the 
numerous patents taken out by them 
for printing, spinning, weaving, paper- 
making, and other arts. Such names 
as Blondeau, Dupin, De Cardonels, Le 
Blon, Ducleu, Pousset, Gastineau, 
Couran, Paul, etc., are found con- 
stantly recurring in the lists of pa- 
tentees for many years subsequent to 



the Revocation. In 1686 we find M. 
Dupin, A. de Cardonels, C. R. M. de 
Crouchy, J. de May, and R. Shales, 
taking out a patent for making writ- 
ing and printing-paper, having ' ' lately 
brought out of France excellent work- 
men, and already set up several new- 
invented mills and engines for making 
thereof, not heretofore used in Eng- 
land." — [See Abridgment of Specifica- 
tions relating to Printing \ p. 82. ] 



CHAP. XIV. 



THE DE PORTALS. 



333 



an ancient and noble family in the south of France, of 
Albigeois descent, who stood firm by the faith of their 
fathers, and several of them suffered death rather than 
prove recreant to it. Toulouse was for many genera- 
tions the home of the Portals, where they held and 
exercised the highest local authority. Several of them 
in succession were elected " Capitoul," a position of 
great dignity and power in that city. When the 
persecution of the Albigeois set in, the De Portals put 
themselves at their head ; but they were unable to 
make head against the tremendous power of the In- 
quisition ; and they fled from Toulouse in different 
directions — some to Nismes, and others into the neigh- 
bourhood of Bordeaux. Some of them perished in 
the massacres which occurred throughout France subse- 
quent to the night of the Saint Bartholomew at Paris; 
and they continued to suffer during the long century 
that ended in the Eevocation ; yet still they remained 
constant to their faith. 

"When the reign of terror under Louis XIV. began 
in the south of France, Louis de Portal was residing 
at his Chateau de la Portalerie, seven leagues from 
Bordeaux. To escape the horrors of the dragonnades, 
he set out with his wife and five children to take refuge 
on his estate in the Cevennes. The dragoons pursued 
the family to their retreat, overtook them, cut down the 
father and mother and one of the children, and burnt 
to the ground the house in which they had taken refuge. 
The remainino; four children had concealed themselves 
in an oven outside the building, and were thus saved. 



334 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



The four orphans — three boys and a girl — immedi- 
ately determined to make for the coast and escape from 
France by sea. After a long and perilous journey on 
foot, exhausted by fatigue and wanting food, they at 
length reached Montauban, where little Pierre, the 
youngest, fell down fainting with hunger at the door 
of a baker's shop. The humane baker took up the 
child, carried him into the house, and fed and cherished 
him. The other three — Henry, William, and Mary 
de Portal — though grieving to leave their brother 
behind them, again set out on foot, and pressed forward 
to Bordeaux. 

There they were so fortunate as to secure a passage by 
a merchant- vessel, on board of which they were shipped 
concealed in barrels. They were among the last of the 
refugees who escaped, previous to the issue of the in- 
famous order to fumigate all departing vessels, so as to 
stifle any Protestant fugitives who might be concealed 
among the cargo. The youthful refugees reached Hol- 
land, where they found friends and foster parents, and 
were shortly in a position to assert the dignity of their 
birth. Miss Portal succeeded in obtaining a situation 
as governess in the family of the Countess of Finken- 
stein, and afterwards married M. Lenornant, a refugee 
settled at Amsterdam ; while Henry and "William fol- 
lowed the fortunes of the Prince of Orange, accompany- 
ing him into England, and establishing the family of 
De Portal in this country* 



* William entered tlie church late Prince George, afterwards George III., 
in life. He was nominated tutor to and held the livings of Clowne in 



CHAP. XIV. 



HENRY DE PORTAL. 



335 



Henry, the elder brother, having learnt the art of 
paper-making, started a mill of his own at Laverstoke, 
on the Itehin. near Whit church in Hampshire, where 
he achieved high reputation as a paper-mannfacturer. 
He carried on his business with great spirit, gathering 
round him the best French and Dutch workmen ; and 
he shortly brought his work to so high a degree of per- 
fection that the Bank of England gave him the privi- 
lege, which a descendant of the family still enjoys, of 
supplying them with the paper for bank-notes* Henry 
de Portal had resolved to rebuild the fortunes of his 
house, though on English ground ; and nobly he did 
it by his skill, his integrity, and his industry. The 
De Portals of Freefolk Priors re-established themselves 
among the aristocratic order to which they originally 
belonged, and sons and daughters of the family formed 



Derbyshire, and Earnbridge in Esses. 
Abraham Portal, whose poetic works 
were p-.iMiihcd in 1751, was his grand- 
son. 

* William Cobbett, writing in 1S2 5, 
says — "From this to WMtclmrch is 
not more than about four miles, and we 
soon reached it, because here you begin 
to descend into the vale in which this 
little town lies, and through which 
there runs that stream which tarns 
the mill of Squire Portal, and which 
mill makes the Bank of England note- 
paper. Talk of the Thames and the 
Hudson, with their forests of masts : 
talk of the Nile and the Delawar, 
bearing the food of millions on their 
bosoms ; talk of the Bio de la Plata and 
the other rivers, then beds pebbled with 
silver and gold and diamonds ! What, 



as to their effect on the condition of 
mankind — as to the virtues, the vices, 
the enjoyments, and the sufferings of 
men, — what are all these rivers put 
together compared with the river at 
Whit church, which a man of three- 
score may jump across dry-shod, which 
moistens a quarter of a mile wide of 
poor, rushy meadow . . . and 
which is, to look at it, of far less im- 
portance than any gutter in the Wen ! 
Yet this river, by merely turning a 
wheel — which wheel sets some rag- 
tearers, and grinders, and washers, 
and recompressors in motion — has pro- 
duced a greater effect on the condition 
of men than has been produced by all 
the other rivers, all the seas, all the 
mines, and all the continents in the 
world.— Rural Bides, pp. 30S-9. 



336 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



alliances with some of the noblest families in England. 
The youngest brother, Pierre de Portal, who had been 
left fainting at the door of the baker at Montauban, 
was brought up to manhood by the baker, held to his 
Protestantism, and eventually set up as a cloth-manu- 
facturer in France. He prospered, married, and his 
sons grew up around him, one of them eventually be- 
coming lord of Penardieres. His grandson Alberedes, 
also faithful to the creed of his fathers, rose to high 
office, having been appointed minister of marine and 
the colonies, councillor of state, and a peer of France, 
at the restoration of the Bourbons. The present baron, 
Pierre Paul Frederick de Portal, maintains the ancient 
reputation of the family ; and to his highly interesting 
work, entitled Les Descendants des ATbigeois et des 
Huguenots, ou Memoires de la Famille de Portal 
(Paris 1860), we are mainly indebted for the above 
facts relating to the family. 

Various other branches of manufacture were either 
established or greatly improved by the refugees. At 
Canterbury they swelled the ranks of the silk-manu- 
facturers; so much so, that in 1694 they possessed 
1000 looms, giving employment to nearly 3000 work- 
men, — though, for the convenience of the trade, the 
greater number of them subsequently removed to 
Spitalfields. Many of the immigrants also found their 
way to Norwich, where they carried on with great 
success the manufacture of lustrings, brocades, padua- 
soys, tabinets, and velvets ; while others carried on the 
making of cutlery, clocks, and watches. The fifty 



CHAP. XIY, 



THE LA CE-MA Nl 'FA CTl 'RE. 



337 



years that followed the settlement of the French re- 
fugees in Norwich was the most prosperous period 
known in the history of that city. Another body of 
refugees settled at Ipswich in 1681, where they began 
the manufacture of fine linen, before then imported 
from France. The elders and deacons of the French 
church in Threadneedle Street raised the necessary 
funds for their support until they could maintain them- 
selves by then industry. They were organised and 
superintended by a refugee from Paris named Bon- 
homme,* one of the most skilled manufacturers in 
France. To the manufacture of linen, one of sail- 
cloth was added, and England was shortly enabled 
entirely to dispense with any further supply of the 
foreign-made article. 

o 

The lace-manufacture, introduced originally by the 
Walloon refugees, was also greatly increased and im- 
proved by the influx of Huguenot lace -makers, prin- 
cipally from Burgundy and Normandy. Some 
established themselves in London, and others betook 
themselves to the adjoining counties, settling at Buck- 
ingham, Newport-Pagnel, and Stony Stratford, from 
whence the manufacture extended into Oxford, North- 
ampton, Cambridge, and the adjoining counties.t 

* In 1631, Savil wrote from Paris f Speaking of Bedfordshire, De 

to Jenkins, then Secretary of State, Foe, in his Tour through the whole 

to announce the approaching de- Island of Great Britain, writes, 

parture of Bonhomme and all his 1 ' Through the whole south part of 

family, adding, ' ' This man will he this country, as far as the "borders of 

ahle to give you some lights into the Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, 

method of bringing the manufacture the people are taken up with the 

of sail-cloth in England.'' manufacture of hone-lace, in which 

Z 



338 HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN ENGLAND, chap. xiv. 



Some of the exiles went as far north as Scotland, 
and settled there. Thus, a colony of weavers from 
Picardy, in France, began the manufacture of linen in 
a suburb of Edinburgh near the head of Leith Walk, 
long after known as " Little Picardy," — the name still 
surviving in Picardy Place. * Others of them built a 
silk-factory, and laid out a mulberry plantation on the 
slope of Moultrie Hill, then an open common. The 
refugees were sufficiently numerous in Edinburgh to 
form a church, of which the Eev. Mr. Dupont was 
minister; and William III., in 1693, granted to the 
city a duty of two pennies on each pint of ale, out of 
which 2000 merks were to be paid yearly towards the 
maintenance of the ministers of the French congre- 
gation. At Glasgow, one of the refugees succeeded in 
establishing a paper-mill, the first in that part of 
Scotland. The Huguenot who erected it escaped from 
France accompanied only by his little daughter. For 
some time after his arrival in Glasgow, he maintained 
himself by picking up rags in the streets. But, by 
dint of thrift and diligence, he eventually contrived to 



they are wonderfully exercised and 
improved within these few years 
past," most probably in consequence 
of the arrival of the French settlers 
after the Eevocation of the Edict of 
Nantes. — Mrs. Palliser — History of 
Lace, p. 353. 

* It has been surmised that Burdie 
House — a corruption of Bordeaux 
House, near Edinburgh, was so called 
because inhabited by another body of 



French refugees at the same period. 
But this is a mistake ; the place 
having been so called by the French- 
man who built the original house — 
most probably one of the followers of 
Mary Stuart, on her coming over to 
Scotland to take possession of the 
Scottish throne. The village of 4 ' Lit- 
tle France," near Craigmillar Castle, 
the residence of Queen Mary, was so 
called from being the quarters of her 
French guards. 



CHAP. XIV. 



REFUGEE INDUSTRY. 



339 



accumulate means sufficient to enable him to start his 
paper-mill, and thus to lay the foundation of an im- 
portant branch of Scottish industry. 

In short, there was scarcely a branch of trade in 
Great Britain but at once felt the beneficial effects of 
the large influx of experienced workmen from France. 
Besides improving those manufactures which had al- 
ready been established, they introduced many entirely 
new branches of industry ; and by their skill, their in- 
telligence, and their laboriousness, they richly repaid 
England for the hospitality and the asylum which had 
been so generously extended to them in their time 
of need. 



CHAPTEE XV. 



THE HUGUENOT CHUECHES IN ENGLAND. 

The vast number of French Protestants who fled into 
England on the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes led 
to a large increase in the number of French churches. 
This was especially the case in London, which was the 
principal seat of the immigration. It may serve to give 
the reader an idea of the large admixture of Huguenot 
blood in the London population, when we state that 
about the beginning of last century, at which time the 
population of the metropolis was not one-fourth of 
what it is now, there were no fewer than thirty-five 
French churches in London and the suburbs.* Of 
these, eleven were in Spitalfields, showing the prepon- 
derance of the French settlers in that quarter. 

The French church in Threadneedle Street, the 
oldest in London, was in a manner the cathedral 
church of the Huguenots. Thither the refugees usually 
repaired on their arrival in London, and such of them 
as had temporarily abjured their faith before flying, to 
avoid the penalty of death or condemnation to the 
galleys, made acknowledgment of their repentance, 



* Mr. Burn, in his History of the in London ; but several of these were 
Foreign Protestant Refugees, gives the old churches merely translated or re- 
names of nearly forty French churches built with new names. 



chap. xv. CHURCHES IX LOXDOX. 



341 



and were again received into membership. During the 
years immediately foUowing the Eevocation, the con- 
sistory of the French church met at least once in every 
week in Threadneedle Street chapel for the purpose of 
receiving; such acknowledgments or " reconnaissances." 
The ministers heard the narrative of the trials of the 
refugees, examined then testimony, and, when judged 
worthy, received them into communion. At the sit- 
ting of the 5th of March 1686, fifty fugitives from 
various provinces of France abjured the Eoman Catho- 
lic religion, to which they had pretended to be con- 
verted: and at one of the sittings in May 1687, not 
fewer than 497 members were again received into the 
church which they had pretended to abandon."' 

While the church in Threadneedle Street was thus 
resorted to by the Huguenot Calvinists, the French 
Episcopal church in the Savoy, opened about the year 
1641, was similarly resorted to by the foreign Pro- 
testants of the Lutheran persuasion. This was the 
fashionable French church of the West End, and was 
resorted to by many of the nobility, who were attracted 
by the eloquence of the preachers who usually minis- 
tered there :t amongst whom we recognise the great 



* We find the folio-wing entry relat- 
ing to the same subject in the Register 
of Glass House Street Chapel : — " Le 
Dimanehe, 13 May 16SS, Elizabeth 
Cautin de St. Martin de Retz, Su- 
sanne Cellier et Marie Cellier sa Souer 
de la Eochelle ont fait reeognoissanee 
publiqne an presche du Matin, 1'une 
pour avoir este au Sermon feignant 



d'estre de 1'Eglise Roniaine, les autres 
deux po r avoir signe leur Abjuration. 
Mon r - Coutet les a receues." 

f Evelyn mentions his attending it 
in 1619, the following entry appearing 
in his journal of that year : — " In the 
afternoon I went to the French church 
in the Savoy, where I heard M. 
d'Espagne catechise." 



342 



HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



names of Durrel, Severin, Abbadie, Saurin, Dubour- 
dieu, Majendie, and Durand. There were also the 
following French churches in the western parts of 
London : — the chapel of Marylebone, founded about 
the year 1656 ; the chapel in Somerset House, origin- 
ally granted by Charles I. to his queen Henrietta as a 
Eoman Catholic place of worship, but which was 
afterwards appropriated by Parliament, in 1653, for the 
use of the French Protestants ; Castle Street Chapel in 
Leicester Square, erected at the expense of the govern- 
ment in 1 6 72 as a place of worship for the refugees ; 
the Little Savoy Chapel in the Strand, granted for 
the same purpose in 1675 ; and Hungerford Chapel in 
Hungerford Market, which was opened as a French 
church in 1687. 

After the Eevolution of 1688, a considerable addi- 
tion was made to the French churches at the West 
End. Thus, three new congregations were formed in 
the year 1689, — those of La Patente, in Soho, first 
opened in Berwick Street, from whence it was after- 
wards removed to Little Chapel Street, Wardour 
Street ; Glasshouse Street Chapel, Golden Square, from 
whence it was afterwards removed to Leicester Fields ; 
and La Quarre (episcopal) Chapel, originally of Ber- 
wick Street, and afterwards of Little Dean Street, 
Westminster. 

Another important French church at the West End 
was that of Swallow Street, Piccadilly."" This con- 



* The cliapel was sold to Dr. James Anderson in 1710, and is now used as 
a Scotch church. 



CHAP. XV. 



SWALLOW STREET CHURCH. 



343 



gregation had originally worshipped in the French 
ambassador's chapel in Monmouth House, Soho Square; 
from whence they removed to Swallow Street in 1690. 
From the records of the chinch, which are preserved at 
Somerset House, it would appear that Swallow Street 
was also in the west what Threadneedle Street Church 
was in the east of London — the place first resorted 
to by the refugee Protestants to make acknowledgment 
of their backslidings, and claim re-admission to church 
membership. Hence the numerous " reconnaissances * 
found recorded in the Swallow Street register. The 
following is a specimen : — li On Friday, the first day 
of the year 1692, Claude Eichier, a refugee from 
Montpellier, has given testimony in presence of this 
church of his repentance at having succumbed to the 
pressure of persecution in abjuring our holy religion, 
which he has confirmed by signing this present record."'" 
There are also entries of conversions, of which the 
following is an instance : — " On Sunday, the fifth day 
of May, the day of Pentecoste, Susan Auvray, a native 
of Paris, has made public abjuration in this church of 
the errors and superstitions of Papism, after having 
given proofs of solid instruction, of her piety and 
good morals, which she has confirmed by signing this 
record.'"'' 

About the year 1700, there was another large in- 
crease in the number of French churches in London, 
six more being added to those already specified — 
namely, I/Eglise du Tabernacle, afterwards removed to 

* See Appendix, Registers of French Churches in England. 



344 HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



Leicester Fields Chapel ; the French Chapel Koyal, St. 
James's ; Les Grecs, in Hog Lane,* now Crown Street, 
Soho ; Spring Gardens Chapel, or the Little Savoy ; 
La Charenton, in Grafton Street, Newport Market ; and 
La Tremblade, or "West Street Chapel, St. Giles's. 
About the same date, additional church accommodation 
was provided for the refugees in the city ; one chapel 
having been opened in Blackfriars, and another in St. 
Martin's Lane, of which the celebrated Dr. Allix was 
for some time pastor. With the latter chapel, known 
as the church of St. Martin Ongars, that of Thread- 
needle Street was eventually united. 

But the principal increase in the French churches 
about this time was in the eastern parts of London, 
where the refugees of the manufacturing class had for 
the most part settled. The large influx of foreign 
Protestants is strikingly shown by the amount of new 
chapels required for their accommodation. Thus, in 
Spitalfields and the adjoining districts, we find the 
following : — L'Eglise de St. Jean, Swan Fields, Shore- 
ditch (1687); La Nouvelle Patente, Crispin Street, 
Spitalfields (1689); L'Eglise de l'Artillerie, Artillery 
Street, - Bishopsgate (1691);* L'Eglise de Crispin 

* Hogarth has given a representa- gations at the west end of London, 

tion of the old chapel in Hog Lane, in The congregations of the Savoy, Les 

his picture of " Noon," and tha figure Grecs, and Spring Gardens were 

coming out of the chapel is said to united — the two former about 1721, 

have been a very good likeness of the and the latter subsequently. The 

Eev. Thomas Herve, who was minister congregation of La Patente en Soho 

there from about 1727 to 1731. This was also united at a later period. — 

chapel, as the representative of the Burn — History of Foreign Protestant 

Savoy, has been considered as the Refugees, 114. 

mother-church of the French congre- t This church boasted of some of 



chap. xv. SUBURBAN FRENCH CHURCHES. 



345 



Street, Spitalfields (1693); Petticoat Lane Chapel, 
Spitalfields (1694); L'Eglise de Perle Street, Spital- 
fields (1697), afterwards incorporated with Crispin 
Street Chapel ; the French Church of Wapping (1 700) ; 
I/Eglise de Bell Lane, Spitalfields (1700); L'Eglise de 
Wheler Street, Spitalfields (1703), afterwards in- 
corporated with La Nouvelle Patente; L'Eglise de 
Swan Fields, Slaughter Street, Shoreditch (1721); 
L'Eglise de THopital, afterwards L'Eglise Neuve, 
Church Street, Spitalfields (1742). Here we have no 
fewer than eleven French churches opened east of 
Bishopsgate Street, providing accommodation for a 
very large number of worshippers. The church last 
named, L'Eglise Neuve, was probably the largest of 
the French places of worship in London, being capable 
of accommodating about 1500 persons. It is now used 
as a chapel by the Wesleyan Methodists ; while the 
adjoining church of the Artillery is used as a poor 
Jews' synaopoue. 

In addition to the French churches in the city, at 
the West End, and in the Spitalfields district, there 
were several thriving congregations in the suburban 
districts of London in which the refugees had settled. 
One of the oldest of these was that of Wandsworth, 
where a colony of Protestant Walloons settled about 
the year 1570. Having formed themselves into a con- 

the most eloquent French preachers Chamier, Pierre Rival, Joseph de la 
in the metropolis. Amongst these Mothe, Ezekiel Barbauld, Jacob Boor- 
may be mentioned Caesar Pegorier, dillon — all men of high repute in their 
the first minister of the congregation ; time, 
and among his successors were Daniel 



346 



HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



gregation, they erected a chapel for worship, which is 
still standing, nearly opposite the parish church. The 
building bears this inscription on its front : — " Erected 
1573— enlarged 1685— repaired 1809, 1831." Like 
the other Eefugee churches, it has ceased to retain its 
distinctive character, being now used as a Congrega- 
tional chapel. The French there had also a special 
burying-ground, situated at the London entrance to 
Wandsworth, in which several distinguished refugees 
have been interred — amongst others, David Montolieu, 
Baron de St. Hyppolite, in 1761, aged ninety-three. 

Several other French churches were established in 
the suburbs after the Eevocation. At Chelsea the 
refugees had two chapels — one in Cook's Grounds (now 
used by the Congregationalists), and another in Little 
Chelsea. There were French churches also at Hammer- 
smith, at Hoxton,* at Bow, and at Greenwich. The 
last named was erected through the influence of the 
Marquis de Euvigny, who formed the centre of a select 
circle of refugee Protestants, who long continued to 
live in the neighbourhood. Before their little church 
was ready for use, the refugees were allowed the use of 
the parish church at the conclusion of the forenoon 
service on Sundays. Evelyn, in his Diary, makes men- 
tion of his attending the French service there in 1687, 
as well as the sermon which followed, in which he says : 
" The preacher pathetically exhorted to patience, con- 



* Of this church Jacob Bourdillon those of Rom illy, Cossart, Faure, 
was the last pastor. Among the Durand, Hankey, Vidal, and Fargues. 
names appearing in the Register are 



chap. xv. CANTERBURY AND SOUTHAMPTON. 347 



stancy, and reliance on God, amidst all their sufferings." 
The French church, which was afterwards erected in 
London Street, not far from the parish church, is now 
used as a Baptist chapel. 

The other French chapels throughout the kingdom, 
like those of London, received a large accession of 
members after the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
and in many cases became too small for their accommo- 
dation. Hence a second French church was opened at 
Canterbury in a place called 4 'The Malthouse,"* situated 
within the cathedral precincts. It consisted at first of 
about 300 persons; but the Canterbury silk trade having 
become removed to Spitalfields, the greater number of 
the French weavers followed it thither ; on which the 
Malthouse Chapel rapidly fell off, and at length became 
extinct about the middle of last century. 

The old French church of " God's House " at South- 
ampton also received a considerable accession of mem- 
bers, chiefly fugitives from the provinces of the opposite 
sea-bord. The original Walloon element had by this 
time almost entirely disappeared ; the immigrants of a 
century before having become gradually absorbed into 
the native population. Hence nearly all the entries in 
the registers of the church subsequent to the year 1685 
describe the members as "Francois refugiez;" some 



* See Appendix — Records of Hugue- 
not Churches in England. The Eev. 
M. Charpentier was one of the early 
ministers of the Malthouse Chapel. In 
a petition to the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury he states that his family had 



suffered very much for the Protestant 
religion, especially his father, who 
was put to death by the dragoons, and 
died a martyr in the year 1683. — 
Burn, p. 53. 



348 



HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



being from " Basse Normandie," others from " Haute 
Languedoc," but the greater number from the province 
of Poitou. 

Numerous refugee military officers, retired from 
active service, seem to have settled in the neighbour- 
hood of Southampton about the beginning of last 
century. Henry de Euvigny, the venerable Earl of Gal- 
way, then lived at Eookley, and formed the centre of a 
distinguished circle of refugee gentry. The Baron de 
Huningue also lived in the town, and was so much re- 
spected and beloved, that at his death he was honoured 
with a public funeral.* We also find the families of 
the De Chavernays and De Cosnes settled in the place. 
The register of " God's House " contains frequent entries 
relating to officers in " Colonel Mordant's regiment/' 
On one occasion we find Brigadier Mordant standing 
sponsor for the twin sons of Major Francois du Chesne 
de Euffanes, major of infantry; and on another, the 
Earl of Galway standing sponsor for the infant son of 
Pierre de Cosne, a refugee gentleman of La Beauce. 
From the circumstance of Gerard de Vaux, the owner 
of a paper-mill in South Stoneham, being a member of 
the congregation, we also infer that several of the 
settlers in the neighbourhood of Southampton were 
engaged in that branch of manufacture. 

Among the new French churches formed in places 
where before there had been none, and which mark 
the new settlements made by the fresh influx of refu- 
gees, may be mentioned those of Bristol, Exeter, 

* See Appendix — Records of Huguenot Churches in England. 



CHAP. XV. 



BRISTOL, PLYMOUTH, ETC. 



349 



Plymouth, Stonehouse, Dartmouth, Barnstaple, and 
Thorpe-le-Soken in Essex. 

The French Episcopal Church at Bristol seems at 
one time to have been of considerable importance. It 
was instituted in 1687, and was first held in what is 
called the Mayor's Chapel of St. Mark the Gaunt; 
but in 1726 a chapel was built for the special use of 
the French congregation on the ground of Queen 
Elizabeth's Hospital for the Bed Maids, situated in 
Orchard Street. The chapel, at its first opening, was 
so crowded with worshippers, that the aisles, as well as 
the altar-place, had to be fitted with benches for their 
accommodation. From the register of the church, it 
would appear that the refugees consisted principally of 
seafaring persons — captains, masters, and sailors — 
chiefly from Nantes, Saintonge, Bochelle, and the Isle 
of Bhe\ 

The congregations formed at Plymouth and Stone- 
house," 5 ' as well as Dartmouth, were in like manner for 
the most part composed of sailors ; whilst those at 
Exeter, on the other hand, were principally trades- 
people and artizans employed in the tapestry manufac- 
ture carried on in that city. M. Majendie, grandfather 
of Dr. Majendie, bishop of Chester, was one of the 
ministers of the Exeter congregation ; and Tom D'Urfey, 

* It seems to have "been the prac- names — not more than about five in 

tice of the minister of the Stonehouse the hundred requiring to sign with a 

church to require all who were present mark — it would thereby appear that 

at baptisms, as well as marriages, the refugees were, as a whole, an 

to sign the register as witnesses ; and educated class, so far at least as ele- 

as nearly all were able to sign their mentary instruction was concerned. 



350 HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



the song-writer, was the son of one of the refugees 
settled in the place. 

The settlement at Thorpe-le-Soken in Essex seems 
to have been a comparatively small one, consisting 
principally of refugee gentry and farmers ; but they 
were in sufficient numbers to constitute a church, of 
which M. Severin, who afterwards removed to Green- 
wich, was the first minister. The church was closed 
" for want of members " about the year 1 726. As was 
the case at many other places, the Thorpe-le-Soken 
refugees gradually ceased to be French. Year by year 
the foreign churches declined, even though fed, from 
time to time, by fresh immigrations from abroad. It 
was in the very nature of things that the rising 
generation should fall away from them, and desire to 
become completely identified with the nation which 
had admitted them to citizenship. Hence the growing 
defections in country places, as well as in the towns 
and cities where the refugees had settled, and hence 
the growing complaints of the falling off in the num- 
bers of their congregations which we find in the 
sermons and addresses of the refugee pastors. 

About the middle of last century, the thirty-five 
French churches in London and its suburbs had 
become reduced to a comparatively small number; 
and the French pastors were full of lamentations as to 
the approaching decadence of those which remained. 
This feeling was given eloquent utterance to by the 
Eev. Jacob Bourdillon, minister of the Artillery Church 
in Spitalfields, on the occasion of the jubilee sermon 



chap. xv. DECADENCE OF THE CHURCHES. 351 



which he preached there in 1782, in commemoration 
of his fifty years' pastorate* He had been appointed 
minister of the congregation when it was a large and 
thriving one in 1731, and he now addressed but a 
feeble remnant of what it had been. The old members 
had died off; but their places had not been supplied 
by the young, who had gone in search of other pas- 
tures. But it was the same with all the other French 
churches. "When he was appointed minister of " The 
Artillery," fifty years before, there had, he said, been 
twentyt flourishing French churches in London, nine 
of which had since been altogether closed ; while of the 
remaining eleven some were fast drawing to their end, 



* During these fifty years M. 
Bourdillon .had to lament the loss of 
many dear friends. No fewer than 
fifty-two pastors of London refugee 
churches had in that time ended their 
course, and of these, six had been his 
colleagues. The deceased ministers, 
whose names he gives, and the places 
in which they ministered, are as 
follows : — 

Chapel Royal, St. James's. — The Kev. 
Messieurs Menard, Aufrere, Serces, 
Rocheblave, De Missy, Barbauld, 
Muisson. 

The Savoy. — Olivier, Du Cros, 
Durand, Deschamps. 

The Walloon Church, Threadneedle 
Street — Bertheau, Besombes, De St. 
Colombe, Bonyer, Barbauld, Conve- 
nant, La Douespe, Duboulai. 

Leicester Fields, Artillery, and La 
Patente. — Blanc, Barbauld, Stehelin 
Mieg, Barnauin. 

La Tremblade. — Gillet, Yver. 



Castle Street and La Qtcarre. — Laval, 
Bernard, Cantier, Robert, Coderc. 

La Patente in Spitalfields. — Foures- 
tier, Manuel, Balquerie, Masson. 

Brown's Lane. — Le Moyne. 

St. John Street. — Vincent, Palairet, 
Beuzeville. 

Wapping. — Gaily de Gaujac, Le 
Beaupin, Say, Guyot, Prelleur. 

Swan Fields. — Briel. 

Pastors of other churches who had 
died in London — Forent, Majendie, 
Esternod, Montignac, Du Plessis, 
Villette, Duval. 

Pastors of French churches in Lon- 
don who had died abroad — Des 
Mazures, Bobineau, Boullier, Eynard, 
Dagneau, Marcombe, Patron, Eomilly. 

f From this it would appear that a 
considerable number of the French 
churches which existed in London at 
the beginning of the century had 
either been closed or become united 
with others. The French churches 



352 



HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



others were scarcely able to exist even with extraneous 
help, while very few were in a position to support 
themselves. 

The causes of this decadence of the churches of the 
refugees were not far to seek. The preacher found 
them in " the lack of zeal and faithfulness in the heads 
of families in encouraging their children to maintain 
them: — churches which their ancestors had reared, a 
glorious monument of the generous sacrifice which they 
had made, of their country, their possessions, and their 
employments, in the sacred cause of conscience, for the 
open profession of the truth ; whereas now/' said he, 
" through the growing aversion of the young for the 
language of their fathers, from whom they seem almost 
ashamed to be descended — shall I say more ? — rbecause 
of inconstancy in the principles of the faith, which in- 
duces so many by a sort of infatuation to forsake the 
ancient assemblies in order to follow novelties unknown 
to our fathers, and listen to pretended teachers whose 
only gifts are rapture and babble, and whose sole in- 
spiration consists in self-sufficiency and pride. Alas ! 
what ravages have been made here, as elsewhere, during 
this jubilee of fifty years I" 

But there were other causes besides these to ac- 

closed between 1731 and 1782, when Les Grecs, Leicester Fields, La Patente, 
this sermon was preached, were these Le Quarre, Threadneedle Street 
— The church of the Savoy (La Grande), (Londres), L'Eglise Neuve, St. Mar- 
Spring Gardens, Rider's Court, La tin, L'Artillerie, La Patente, and St. 
Treniblade, Castle Street, Wheeler Jean Street. Of these only three 
Street, Crispin Street, Swan Fields, remain in existence, in two of which 
and Marylebone. The churches which the ritual of the Church of England 
still survived were these— St. James's, has been adopted. 



chap. xv. DECADENCE OF THE CHURCHES. 



353 



count for the decadence of the refugee churches. 
Nature itself was working against them. Year by 
year the children of the refugees were becoming less 
and less French, and more and more English. They 
lived and worked amongst the English, and spoke 
their language. They intermarried with them ; their 
children played together; and the idea of remaining 
foreigners in the country in which they had been born 
and bred, became year by year more distasteful to 
them. They were not a "peculiar people/' like the 
Jews ; but Protestants, like the nation which had given 
them refuge, and into which they naturally desired to 
become wholly merged. Hence it was that, by the end of 
the eighteenth century, nearly all the French churches, 
as such, had disappeared ; and the places of the French 
ministers became occupied in some cases by clergymen 
of the Established Church, and in others by ministers 
of the different dissenting persuasions. 

The Church of the Artillery, in which the Kev. Mr. 
Bourdillon preached the above sermon so full of lamen- 
tations, is now occupied as a poor Jews' synagogue. 
L'Eglise Neuve is a chapel of the Wesleyan Methodists. 
L'Eglise de St. Jean, Swan Fields, Shoreditch, has be- 
come one of the ten new churches of St. Matthew, 
Bethnal Green. Swallow Street Chapel is used as a 
Scotch Church. Leicester Fields, now called Orange 
Street Chapel, is occupied by a congregation of Inde- 
pendents. Whereas Castle Street Chapel, Leicester 
Square, was, until quite recently, used as a Court of 
Eequests. 

2 A 



354 



HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



The French churches at Wandsworth and Chelsea 
are occupied by the Independents ; and those at Green- 
wich and Plymouth by the Baptists. The Dutch church 
at Maidstone is used as a school ; while the "Walloon 
church of Yarmouth was first converted into a theatre, 
and has since done duty as a warehouse. 

Among the charitable institutions founded by the 
refugees for the succour of their distressed fellow- 
countrymen in England, the most important was the 
French Hospital. This establishment owes its origin 
to M. De Gastigny, a French gentleman who had been 
master of the buckhouncls to William III. in Holland, 
while Prince of Orange. At his death in 1708, he be- 
queathed a sum of £1000 towards founding an hos- 
pital in London for the relief of distressed French 
Protestants. The money was placed at interest for 
eight years, during which successive benefactions were 
added to the fund. In 1716, a piece of ground in Old 
Street, St. Luke's, was purchased of the Ironmongers' 
Company, and a lease was taken from the city of 
London of some adjoining land forming altogether 
an area of about four acres, on which a building was 
erected and fitted up for the reception of eighty poor 
Protestants of the French nation* In 1718, George I. 
granted a charter of incorporation to the governor and 
directors of the hospital, under which the Earl of 
Galway was appointed the first governor. Shortly 
after, in November 1718, the opening of the institution 
was celebrated by a solemn act of religion ; and the 
chapel was consecrated amidst a great concourse of 



CHAP. XV. 



THE FRENCH HOSPITAL. 



355 



refugees and their descendants, the Eev. Philip Menard, 
minister of the French chapel of St. James's, conducting 
the service on the occasion. 

From that time the funds of the institution steadily 
increased. The French merchants of London, who 
had been prosperous in trade, liberally contributed 
towards its support ; and legacies and donations multi- 
plied. Lord Galway bequeathed £1000 to the hospital 
at his death in 1720 ; and, in the following year, Baron 
Hervart de Huningue gave a donation of £4000. 
The corporation were placed in the possession of ample 
means • and they accordingly proceeded to erect addi- 
tional buildings, in which they were enabled by the 
year 1760 to give an asylum to 234 poor people.'" 

Among the distinguished noblemen and gentlemen 
of French Protestant descent who have officiated as 
governors of the institution since the date of its found- 
ation, may be mentioned the Earl of Galway, the Baron 
de Huningue, Eobethon (privy councillor), the Baron 
de la Court, Lord Ligonier, and several successive Earls 
of Eadnor ; whilst among the list of directors we recog- 
nise the names of Montolieu, Baron de St. Hippolite, 
Gambier, Bosanquet, Colombies, Magendie (D.D.), 
Colonel de Cosne, Dalbiac, Gaussen, Dargent, Blaquiere, 
General BufTane, Lefevre, Boileau (Bart.), Colonel Yig- 



* The French hospital has recently Mr. Kobert Lewis Koinnieu, architect, 

been removed from its original site to one of the directors ; Mr. Eonmieu 

Victoria Park, where a handsome being himself descended from an illus- 

building has been erected as an hospi- trious Huguenot family — the Eou- 

tal for the accommodation of 40 men mieus of Languedoc. 

and 20 women, after the designs of - 



356 HUGUENOT CHURCHES IN ENGLAND, chap. xv. 



noles, Eomilly, Turquand, Pechel (Bart.), Travers, 
Lieut. -General de Villetes, Major-General Montresor, 
Devisme, Chamier (M.P.), Major-General Layard, 
Bouverie, Captain Dumaresq (E.N.), Duval, the Hon. 
Philip Pusey, Andre (Bart.), De Hochepied Larpent 
(Bart), Jean Sylvestre (Bart.), Cazenove, Dollond, Petit 
(M.D.), Le Mesurier, Landon, Martineau, Baron Maseres, 
Chevalier, Durand, Hanbury, Labouchere, De la Eue 
(F.E.S.) ; and many other names well known and highly 
distinguished in the commerce, politics, literature, and 
science of England. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 



HUGUENOT SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 

It had long been the policy of the English monarchs 
to induce foreign artizans to settle in Ireland, and 
establish new branches of skilled industry there. It 
was hoped that the Irish people might be induced to 
follow their example, and that thus the unemployed 
population of that country, instead of being a source of 
national poverty and weakness, might be rendered a 
source of national wealth and strength. 

We have already seen the Earl of Strafford engaged 
in an attempt to establish the linen-trade in the north 
of Ireland. But his term of office was cut short ; and 
the country shortly after fell a prey to civil war 
and all its horrors. At the Eestoration, Charles II. 
endeavoured to pursue the same policy ; and many of 
the French refugees, so soon as they landed in Eng- 
land, were forwarded into Ireland at the expense of 
the state. In 1674, the Irish Parliament passed an 
Act offering letters of naturalisation to the refugees, 
and free admission to all corporations. The then 
viceroy, the Duke of Ormond, zealously encouraged 
this policy; and under his patronage, colonies of French 
refugees were planted at Dublin, Waterford, Cork, 
Kilkenny, Lisburn, and Portarlington, where they 



358 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



introduced glove-making, silk-weaving, lace-making, 
and manufactures of cloth and linen. The refugees 
were prosperously pursuing their respective trades 
when the English Eevolution of 1688 occurred, and 
again Ireland was thrown into a state of civil war, 
which continued for three years, but was at length 
concluded by the peace of Limerick in 1691. 

No sooner was the war at an end than "William III. 
took steps to restore the prostrate industry of the 
country. The Irish Parliament again revived their bill 
of 1 674 (which the Parliament of James had suspended), 
granting naturalisation to such of the refugees as should 
settle in Ireland, and guaranteeing them the free exer- 
cise of their religion. A large number of William's 
foreign officers at once availed themselves of the privi- 
lege, and settled at Youghal, Waterford, and Portar- 
lington ; whilst colonies of foreign manufacturers at the 
same time planted themselves at Dublin, Cork, Lisburn, 
and other places. 

The refugees who settled at Dublin established 
themselves for the most part in " The Liberties," 
where they began the manufacture of tabinet, since 
more generally known as " Irish poplin.""" The de- 
mand for the article became such that a number of 
French masters and workmen left Spitalfields, and 

* There are no certain records for the weaving of tabinets or poplins and 
fixing the precise date when silk- tabbareas, in the liberties of Dublin, 
weaving was commenced in Dublin ; about the year 1693. — Dr. W. Cooke 
but it is generally believed that an Taylok, in Statistical Journal for De- 
ancestor of the present respected cember 1843, p. 354. 
family of the Latouches commenced 



CHAP. XVI. 



THE DUBLIN COLO XV. 



359 



migrated to Dublin, where they largely extended the 
manufacture. The Combe, Pimlieo, Spitalnelds, and 
other streets in Dublin, named after coiTesponding 
streets in London, were built fur their accommodation ; 
and Weavers Square became a principal quarter in the 
city. For a time the trade was very prosperous, and 
gave employment to a large number of persons ; but 
about the beginning of the present century, the frequent 
recurrence of strikes amongst the workmen paralysed 
the employers of labour : the manufacture in conse- 
quence became almost lost, and <; The Liberties," in- 
stead of the richest, became one of the poorest quar- 
ters of Dublin. So long as the French colony 
prospered, the refugees had three congregations in the 
city. One of these was an Episcopal congregation, 
attached to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which worshipped 
in St. Mary's Chapel, granted to them by the dean 
and chapter: and it continued in existence until the 
year 1816. The other two were Calvinistic consrega- 
tions, one of which had then place of worship in Peter 
Street, and the other in Lucas Lane. The refugees also 
had special burying-places assigned them — the principal 
one adjoining St. Stephen's Green, and the other being 
situated on the southern outskirts of the city. 

But the northern counties of Down and Antrim 
were, more than any other parts of Ireland, regarded 
as the sanctuary of the refugees. There they found 
themselves amongst men of their own religion — mostly 
Scotch Calvinists, who had fled from the Stuart perse- 
cutions in Scotland to take refuge in the comparatively 



360 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



unmolested districts of Ulster. Lisburn, formerly called 
Lisnagarvey, about ten miles south-west of Belfast, 
was one of the favourite settlements of the refugees. 
The place had been burnt to the ground in the civil 
war of 1641 ; but with the help of the refugees it was 
before long restored to more than its former import- 
ance, and shortly became one of the most prosperous 
towns in Ireland. 

The government of the day, while they discouraged 
the woollen-manufacture of Ireland because of its 
supposed injury to England, made every effort to 
encourage the trade in linen. An Act was passed with 
the latter object in 1697, containing various enact- 
ments calculated to foster the growth of flax and the 
manufacture of linen cloth. Before the passing of this 
Act, William III. proceeded to invite Louis Crommelin, 
a Huguenot refugee, then temporarily settled in 
Holland, to come over into Ireland and undertake 
the superintendence of the new branch of industry. 

Crommelin belonged to a family who had carried 
on the linen-manufacture in its various branches in 
France for upwards of 400 years, and he had him- 
self been engaged in the business for more than 30 
years at Armandcourt, near Saint Quentin in Picardy, 
where he was born. He was singularly well fitted for 
the office to which the king called him, being a person 
of admirable business qualities, of excellent good 
sense, and of remarkable energy and perseverance. 
Being a Protestant, and a man of much foresight, he 
had quietly realised what he could of his large property 



CHAP. XVI. 



LOUIS CROMMELIN. 



3G1 



in the neighbourhood of St. Quentin, shortly before 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and migrated 
across the frontier into Holland before the bursting of 
the storm. 

In 1698, Crommelin, having accepted the invitation 
of William, left Holland, accompanied by his son, and 
shortly after his arrival in England he proceeded into 
the north of Ireland to fix upon the site best adapted 
for the intended undertaking. After due deliberation, 
he pitched upon the ruined village of Lisnagarvey as 
the most suitable for his purpose."* The king approved 
of the selection, and authorised Crommelin to proceed 
with his operations, appointing him " Overseer of the 
Royal Linen Manufactory of Ireland." In considera- 
tion of Crommelin advancing £10,000 out of his own 
private fortune to commence the undertaking, a grant 
of £800 per annum was guaranteed to him for twelve 
years, being at the rate of 8 per cent on the capital 
invested. At the same time, an annuity of £200 was 
granted him for life, and £120 a-year for two assistants, 
whose duty it was to travel from place to place and 
superintend the cultivation of the flax, as well as to 
visit the bleach-grounds and see to the proper finishing 
of the fabric.t 

* Crommelin's first factory was at "In consequence of a proposal by 
the foot of the wooden bridge over Louis Crommelin to establish a linen- 
the Lagan, and his first bleaching- manufacture in Ireland, and the de- 
ground was started at the place called sign and method in said memorial 
Hilden. being approved of by the Commis- 

+ The following is the substance of sioners of Treasury and Tjade, the 

the patent granted by King William following grant was made : — That 

to Louis Crommelin : — ■ £800 be settled for ten years as interest 



3G2 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 



CHAP. XVI. 



Crommelin at once sent invitations abroad to the 
Protestant artizans to come over and join him, and 
numbers of them responded to his call. A little colony 
of refugees of all ranks and many trades soon became 
planted at Lisburn, and the place shortly began to ex- 
hibit an appearance of returning prosperity. With a 
steadiness of purpose which distinguished Crommelin 
through life, he devoted himself with unceasing zeal 
to the promotion of the enterprise which he had taken 
in hand. He liberally rewarded the toil of his brother- 
exiles, and cheered them on the road to success. He 
imported from Holland a thousand looms and spinning- 
wheels of the best construction, and gave a premium 
of £5 for every loom that was kept going. Before 
long, he introduced improvements of his own in the 
looms and spinning-wheels, as well as in the imple- 
ments and in the preparation of the material. Every 
branch of the operations made rapid progress under 
the Huguenot chief, from the sowing, cultivating, and 



on £10,000 advanced by said Louis 
Crommelin for the making of a bleach - 
ing-yard and building a pressing-bouse, 
and for weaving, cultivating, and 
pressing bemp and flax, and making 
provision of botb to be sold ready 
prepared to the spinners at reasonable 
rate and upon credit ; providing all 
tools and utensils, looms, and spinning- 
wheels, to be furnished at the several 
costs of persons employed, by advances 
to be paid by them in small payments 
as they are able ; advancing sums of 
money necessary for the subsistence 
of such workmen and their families as 



shall come from abroad, and of such 
persons of this our kingdom as shall 
apply themselves in families to work 
in the manufactories ; such sums to 
be advanced without interest, and to 
be repaid by degrees. That £200 per 
annum be allowed to said Crommelin 
during pleasure for his pains and care 
in carrying on said work, and that 
£120 per annum be allowed for two 
assistants, together with a premium 
of £60 per annum for the subsistence 
of a French minister, and that letters 
patent be granted accordingly. Dated 
14th February 1699." 



CHAP. XVI. 



LOUIS CROMMELIN. 



363 



preparing of the flax through the various stages of its 
manipulation, to the finish of the cloth at the bleach- 
fields. And thus, by painstaking, skill, and industry, 
zealously supported as he was by his artizans, Crom- 
melin was shortly enabled to produce finer sorts of 
fabrics than had ever before been made in Britain.* 

Crommelin, amongst his other labours for the estab- 
lishment of the linen trade, wrote and published at 
Dublin, in 1705, An Essay towards the improving of 
the Hempen and Flaxen Manufactures of the Kingdom 
of Ireland, so that all might be made acquainted with 



* A linen board was established by 
the Duke of Ormond in October 1711. 
In a petition to this board, L. Crom- 
melin recounted all he had done, and 
requested a renewal of the patent. 
The board reported favourably. Crom- 
melin had now been fourteen years at 
work. The colony of refugees, about 
70 at first, had increased to 120 in 
1711. In 1703, November 20, parlia- 
ment voted confidence in Crommelin, 
and again, in October 1707, by vote 
declared that he had been eminently 
useful. In his petition, Crommelin 
states that " by the first patent, 
granted by the late King William, 
the whole sum of £800 was granted 
to your petitioner for the settlement 
of himself and colony for ten years, 
over and above £380 per annum for 
pension for your petitioner and his 
three assistants, and the minister, 
during pleasure, which said patent 
was not put in execution, but instead 
thereof, after the said King William's 
death, the Honourable Trustees ob- 
tained a second from our most gracious 



Queen Anne, authorising them to 
dispose of the said sums of £800 and 
£380, both to your petitioner and to 
his colony, and the natives of the 
country, both which sums were 
limited for ten years, whereas by the 
first the pensions were granted during 
pleasure ; so that your petitioner was 
reduced to £400, which was a great 
discouragement, and produced not 
3 per cent, instead of the 8 per cent 
they were to have by the first patent. 
. . . . The present patent will 
determine on the 24th June next, and 
unless the same be renewed for a cer- 
tain term of years, your petitioner 
and his colony will be reduced to 
great extremities, and rendered in- 
capable of continuing a settlement 
begun with so much difficulty. " The 
prayer of the petition was for a 
renewal of the patent for ten years or 
other term, and for Crommelin a 
pension of £500 per annum, which 
was granted. — Ulster Journal of 
Archceology, i. 286-9. 



364 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 



CHAP. XVI. 



the secret of his success, and be enabled to go and do 
likewise. The treatise contained many useful instruc- 
tions for the cultivation of flax, in the various stages of 
its planting and growth to perfection, together with 
directions for the preparation of the material, in the 
several processes of spinning, weaving, and bleaching. 

Though a foreigner, Crommelin continued through- 
out his life to take a warm interest in the prosperity of 
his adopted country ; and his services were recognised, 
not only by King William, who continued his firm 
friend to the last, but by the Irish Parliament, who 
from time to time voted grants of money to himself, 
his assistants, and his artizans,* to enable him to pro- 
secute his enterprise ; and in 1707, they voted him the 
public thanks for his patriotic efforts towards the estab- 
lishment of the linen trade in Ireland, of which he was 



* In the papers of the Irish House 
of Commons the following account 
occurs : — 

Pensions paid to the French colony 
at Lisburn — 

1704- 5, 

Feb. 16. Paid to Louis Crommelin, 

for three years . £600 
To French minister, for 

two years . .102 
To flax -dresser for two 

and a quarter years 27 
To the reed-maker for 

the like term . 18 

1705- 6, 

Jan. 18. To Louis Crommelin for 

one year . . 280 
Nov. 26. To same for nine months 210 
1707, 

Aug. 22. To same for like term 210 



1707, 

Aug. 22. To the arrears of two 

assistants . . £360 

Nov. 20. To Louis Crommelin, 
minister, etc., for 
three months . 80 

1708, 

June 19. To do. do. for six 

months . . . 160 
Dec. 11. To same ... 26 
The "reed-maker" referred to in 
this account was one Mark Henry 
Dupre, a skilled workman who fled 
from France shortly after the Ee- 
vocation, and landed in the south of 
Ireland. From thence he made his 
way to Lisburn, and joined Crom- 
melin, to whom he proved of great 
service. His descendants are still to 
be found in Belfast. 



CHAP. XVI. 



THE COLONY AT LIS BURN. 



3G5 



unquestionably the founder. Crommelin died in 1727, 
and was buried beside other members of his family who 
had gone before him, in the churchyard at Lisburn. 

The French refugees long continued a distinct 
people in that neighbourhood. They clung together, 
associated together, and worshipped together, frequent- 
ing their own French church, in which they had a long 
succession of French pastors/" They carefully trained 
up their children in their native tongue, and in the 
Huguenot faith ; cherishing the hope of some day being 
enabled to return to their native land. But that hope 
at length died out, and the descendants of the Crom- 
melins eventually mingled with the families of the Irish, 
and became part and parcel of the British nation. 

Among the other French settlers at Lisburn was 
Peter Goyer, a native of Picardy. He owned a large 
farm there, and also carried on an extensive business 
as a manufacturer of cambric and silk, at the time of 
the Eevocation ; but when the dragonnades began, he 
left all his property behind him and fled across the 
frontier. The record is still preserved in the family, of 
the cruelties practised upon Peter's martyred brother 

* The Rev. Saumarez Dubourdieu, marriages with Irish families, the 
grandson of the celebrated French chapel was at length closed — it is 
pastor of the Savoy Church in London, now used as the court-house of Lis- 
was minister of the French church at burn — and the pastor Dubourdieu 
Lisburn for forty-five years, and was having joined the Established Church, 
so beloved in the neighbourhood that he was presented with the living of 
at the insurrection of 1798 he was the Lambeg. His son, rector of Anna- 
only person in Lisburn whom the in- helt, County Down, was the author of 
surgents agreed to spare. The French A Statistical Survey of the County An- 
congregation having become greatly trim, published in 1812. 
decreased, by deaths as well as inter- 



366 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



by the ruthless soldiery, who tore a leaf from his Bible 
and forced it into his mouth before he died. From 
Holland, Goyer proceeded to England, and from thence 
to Lisburn, where he began the manufacture of the 
articles for which he had acquired so much reputation 
in his own country. After a short time, he resolved 
on returning to France, in the hope of being able to 
recover some of his property. But the persecution was 
raging more fiercely than ever, and he found that, if 
captured, he would probably be condemned to the 
galleys for life. He again contrived to make his 
escape, having been carried on board an outward-bound 
ship concealed in a wine-cask. Eeturned to Lisburn, 
he resumed the manufacture of silk and cambric, in 
which he employed a considerable number of workmen. 
The silk-manufacture there was destroyed in the rebel- 
lion of 1798, which dispersed the work-people; but 
that of cambric survived, and became firmly founded 
at Lurgan, which now enjoys a high reputation for 
the perfection of its manufactures. 

Other colonies of the refugees were established in 
the south of Ireland, where they carried on various 
branches of manufacture. William Crommelin, a brother 
of Louis, having been appointed one of his assistants, 
superintended the branch of the linen trade which was 
established at Kilkenny through the instrumentality 
of the Marquis of Ormonde. Another settlement of 
refugees was formed at Cork, where they congregated 
together in a quarter of the town forming part of the 
parish of St. Paul, the principal street in which is still 



CHAP. XVI. 



JAMES FONTAINE. 



3G7 



called French Church Street. Though the principal 
refugees at Cork were merchants and traders, there was 
a sufficient number of them to begin the manufacture 
of woollen-cloth, ginghams, and other fabrics, which 
they carried on for a time with considerable success. 

The woollen-manufacture at Cork was begun by 
James Fontaine, a member of the noble family of De la 
Fontaine, in France, a branch of which embraced Pro- 
testantism in the sixteenth century, and continued to 
adhere to it down to the period of the Eevocation. The 
career of James Fontaine was singularly illustrative of 
the times in which he lived. His case was only one 
amongst thousands of others, in which persons of rank, 
wealth, and learning, were suddenly stripped of their 
all, and compelled to become wanderers over the wide 
earth for conscience' sake. His life further serves to 
show how a clever and agile Frenchman, thrown upon 
a foreign shore, a stranger to its people and its lan- 
guage, without any calling or resources, but full of 
energy and courage, could contrive to earn an honest 
living and achieve an honourable reputation. 

James Fontaine was the son of a Protestant 
pastor of the same name, and was born at Eoyan in 
Saintonge, a famous Huguenot district. His father 
was the first of the family to drop the aristocratic 
prefix of " de la," which he did from motives of humi- 
lity. When a child, Fontaine met with an accident 
through the carelessness of a nurse which rendered him 
lame for life. When only eight years old, his father 
died, and little was done for his education until he 



368 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



arrived at' about the age of seventeen, when he was 
placed under a competent tutor, and eventually took 
the degree of M.A. with distinction at the College of 
Guienne, when in his twenty-second year. Shortly 
after, his mother died, and he became the possessor of 
her landed property near Pons on the Charente. 

Young Fontaine's sister, Marie, had married a Pro- 
testant pastor, named Forestier, of St. Mesme in An- 
goumois. Jacques went to live with them for a time, 
and study theology under the pastor. The persecutions 
having shortly set in, Forestier's church was closed, and 
he himself compelled to fly to England. The congre- 
gation of St. Mesme was consequently left without a 
minister. Young Fontaine, well knowing the risk he 
ran, nevertheless encouraged the Protestants to as- 
semble in the open air, and himself occasionally con- 
ducted their devotions. For this he was cited to 
appear before the local tribunals. He was charged with 
the crime of attending one of such meetings in 1684, 
contrary to law, and though he had not been present 
at the meeting specified, he was condemned and im- 
prisoned. He appealed to the Parliament at Paris, 
whither he carried his plea of alibi, and was acquitted. 

Early in 1685, the year of the Eevocation, the 
dragoons were sent into the Huguenot district of 
Eoyan to carry out the mission of the " Most Christian 
King." In anticipation of their visit, shiploads of 
Huguenots had sailed for Holland and England a few 
days before, but Fontaine did not accompany them. 
He fled from his home, however, and remained con- 



CHAP. XVI. 



JAMES FONTAINE. 



369 



cealed amongst his friends and relatives until he felt 
that he could no longer remain in France with safety. 
In the month of October, when the intelligence reached 
him that the Edict of Eevocation was proclaimed, he 
at once determined to make his escape. A party of 
Protestant ladies had arranged to accompany him, con- 
sisting of Janette Forestier, the daughter of the pastor 
of St. Mesme (now a fugitive in England), his niece, 
and the two Mesdemoiselles Boursignot, to one of whom 
he was betrothed. 

At Marennes, Fontaine found the captain of an 
English ship who was willing to give the party a 
passage to England. It was at first intended that 
they should rendezvous on the sands near Tremblade, 
and then proceed privily on shipboard. But the 
coast was very strictly guarded, especially between 
Royan and La Rochelle, where the Protestants of the 
interior were constantly seeking outlets for escape ; and 
this part of the plan was given up. The search of 
vessels leaving the ports had become so strict, that the 
English captain feared that even if Fontaine and his 
ladies succeeded on getting on board, it would not be 
possible for him to conceal them or prevent their falling 
into the hands of the king's detectives. He therefore pro- 
posed that his ship should set sail, and that the fugitives 
should put to sea and wait for him to take them on 
board. It proved fortunate that this plan was adopted ; 
for, scarcely had the English merchantman left Trem- 
blade, than she was boarded and searched by a French 

frigate on the look-out for fugitive Protestants. No 

2 B 



370 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



prisoners were found; and the captain of the mer- 
chantman was ordered to proceed at once on the 
straight course for England. 

Meanwhile, the boat containing the fugitives having 
put to sea, as arranged, lay to waiting the approach of 
the English vessel. That they might not be descried 
from the frigate, which was close at hand, the boatman 
made them lie down in the bottom of his boat, covering 
them with an old sail. They all knew the penalties to 
which they were liable if detected in the attempt to 
escape — Fontaine, the boatman, and his son, to con- 
demnation to the galleys for life ; and the three ladies 
to imprisonment for life. The frigate bore down upon 
the boat and hailed the boatman, who feigned drunken- 
ness so well as completely to deceive the king s cap- 
tain, who, seeing nothing but the old sail in the bottom 
of the boat, ordered the ship s head to be put about, 
when the frigate sailed away in the direction of Eoche- 
fort. Shortly after, while she was still in sight, though 
distant, the agreed signal was given by the boat to the 
merchantman (that of dropping the sail three times 
in the apparent attempt to hoist it), on which the 
English vessel lay to, and took the exiles on board. 
After a voyage of eleven days, they reached the wel- 
come asylum of England, and Fontaine and his party 
landed at Barnstaple, North Devon, his sole property 
consisting of twenty pistoles and six silver spoons, which 
had belonged to his father, and bore upon them his 
infantine initials, I. D. L. F.— Jacques de la Fontaine. 

Fontaine and the three ladies were hospitably re- 



CHAP. XVI. 



JAMES FONTAINE. 



371 



ceived by Mr. Donne of Barnstaple, with whom they 
lived until a home could be prepared for their re- 
ception. One of the first things which occupied Fon- 
taine's attention was, how to earn a living for their 
support. A cabin-biscuit, which he bought for a half- 
penny, gave him his first hint. The biscuit would have 
cost twopence in France ; and it at once occurred to 
him that, such being the case, grain might be shipped 
from England to France at a profit. Mr. Donne agreed 
to advance the money requisite for the purpose, taking 
half the profits. The first cargo of corn exported proved 
very profitable; but Fontaine's partner afterwards 
insisting on changing the consignee, who proved dis- 
honest, the speculation eventually proved unsuccess- 
ful. 

Fontaine had by this time married the Huguenot 
lady to whom he was betrothed, and who had accom- 
panied him in his flight to England. After the failure 
of the corn speculation, he removed to Taunton in 
Somerset, where with difficulty he made shift to live. 
He took pupils, dealt in provisions, sold brandy, 
groceries, stockings, leather, tin and copper wares, and 
carried on wool-combing, dyeing, and the making of 
calimancoes. In short, he was a " jack-of-all-trades 
and his following so many callings occasioned so much 
jealousy in the place, that he was cited before the 
mayor and aldermen as an interloper, and required to 
give an account of himself.'" This and other circum- 



* When Fontaine was brought be- comber), he was asked if he had served 
fore the mayor (who was a wool- an apprenticeship to all the trades 



372 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 



CHAP. XVI. 



stances determined him to give up business in Taunton 
— not, however, before he had contrived to save about 
£1000 by his industry — and to enter on the life of a 
pastor. He had already been admitted to holy orders 
by the French Protestant synod at Taunton, and in 
1694 he left that town for Ireland in search of a con- 
gregation. 

Fontaine's adventures in Ireland were still more 
remarkable than those he had experienced in England. 
The French refugees established at Cork had formed 
themselves into a congregation, of which he was ap- 



he carried on. Fontaine replied — 
' ' Gentlemen, in France a man is 
esteemed according to his qualifica- 
tions, and men of letters and study 
are especially honoured by everybody 
if they conduct themselves with pro- 
priety, even though they should not 
be worth one penny. . . . All the 
apprenticeship I have ever served, 
from the age of four years, has been 
to turn over the pages of a book. I 
took the degree of Master of Arts at 
the age of twenty-two, and then de- 
voted myself to the study of the Holy 
Scriptures. Hitherto I had been 
thought worthy of the best company 
wherever I had been ; but when I 
came to this town, I found that science 
without riches was regarded as a cloud 
without water, or a tree without fruit 
— in a word, a thing worthy of supreme 
contempt ; so much so, that if a poor 
ignorant wool-comber or a hawker 
amassed money he was honoured by 
all, and looked up to as the first in 
the place. I have therefore, gentle- 
men, renounced all speculative science; 



I have become a wool-comber, a dealer 
in pins and laces, hoping that I may 
one clay attain wealth, and be also one 
of the first men in the town." 

The recorder laid down the law in 
favour of Fontaine : — " If the poor 
refugees," said he, " who have aban- 
doned country, friends, property, and 
everything sweet and agreeable in this 
life, for their religion and the glory 
of the Gospel, — if they had not the 
means of gaining a livelihood, the 
parish would be burdened with their 
maintenance, for you could not send 
them to their birthplace. The parish 
is obliged to Mr. Fontaine for every 
morsel of bread he earns for his family. 
In the desire he has to live indepen- 
dently, he humbles himself so far as 
to become a tradesman, a thing very 
rarely seen among learned men, such 
as I know him to be from my own 
conversations with him. There is no 
law that can disturb him." 

Fontaine retired from the court 
amidst showers of benedictions. 



CHAP. XVI. 



JAMES FONTAINE. 



373 



pointed pastor in January 1695. They were, however, 
as yet too poor to pay him any stipend ; and, in order 
to support himself, as well as turn to account the 
£1000 which he had saved by his industry and fru- 
gality at Taunton, he began a manufactory of broad- 
cloth. This gave much welcome employment to the 
labouring poor of the city, besides contributing towards 
the increase of its general trade, in acknowledgment of 
which the corporation presented him with the freedom. 
He still continued to officiate as pastor ; but, one day, 
when expounding the text of " Thou shalt not steal," 
he preached so effectively as to make a personal enemy 
of a member of his congregation, who, unknown to 
him, had been engaged in a swindling transaction. 
The result was, so much dissension in the congregation 
that he eventually gave up the charge. 

To occupy his spare time — for Fontaine was a man 
of an intensely active temperament, unhappy when 
unemployed — he took a farm at Bearhaven, situated 
at the entrance to Bantry Bay, nearly at the extreme 
south-west point of Munster, the very Land's End of 
Ireland, for the purpose of founding a fishery. The 
idea occurred to him, as it has since occurred to others, 
that there were many hungry people on land waiting 
to be fed, and shoals of fish at sea waiting to be 
caught, and that it would be a useful enterprise to form 
a fishing-company, and induce the idle people to put 
to sea and catch the fish, selling to others the surplus 
beyond what was necessary to feed them. Fontaine 
succeeded in inducing some of the French merchants 



374 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



settled in London to join him in the venture ; and he 
himself went to reside at Bearhaven to superintend the 
operations of the company. 

Fontaine failed, as other Irish fishing-companies 
have since failed. The people would rather starve than 
go to sea, for Celts are by nature averse to salt water ; 
and the consequence was, that the company made no 
progress. Fontaine had even to defend Mmself against 
the pillaging and plundering of the natives. He then 
brought some thirteen French refugee families to settle 
in the neighbourhood, having previously taken small 
farms for them, including Dursey Island ; but the Irish 
gave them no peace nor rest, and they left him before 
the end of three years. The local court would give 
Fontaine no redress when any injury was done to him. 
If his property was stolen, and he appealed to the 
court, his complaint was referred to a jury of papists, 
who invariably decided against him ; whereas, if the 
natives made any claim upon him, they were sure to 
recover. 

Notwithstanding these great discouragements, Fon- 
taine held to his purpose, and determined, if possible, 
to establish his fishing station. He believed that time 
would work in his favour, and that it might yet be 
possible to educate the people into habits of industry. 
He was well supported by the government, who, 
observing his zealous efforts to establish a new branch 
of industry, and desirous of giving him increased in- 
fluence in his neighbourhood, appointed him justice of 
the peace. In this capacity he was found very useful 



CHAP. XVI. 



If AMES FONTAINE. 



375 



in keeping down the " Tories,"''' and breaking up the 
connection between them and the French privateers 
who then frequented the coast. Knowing his liability 
to attack, Fontaine converted his residence at Bear- 
haven into a sod fort, and not without cause, as the 
result proved. In June 1704, a French privateer 
entered Bantry Bay and proceeded to storm the sod 
fort. The lame Fontaine, by the courage and ability 
of his defence, showed himself a commander of no 
mean skill. John Macliney, a Scotchman, and Paul 
Eoussier, a French refugee, showed great bravery on 
the occasion ; while Madame Fontaine, who acted as 
aide-de-camp and surgeon, distinguished herself by her 
quiet courage. The engagement lasted from eight in 
the morning until four in the afternoon, when the 
French decamped with the loss of three killed and 
seven wounded, spreading abroad a very wholesome 
fear of Fontaine and his sod fort. 

When the refugee's gallant exploit was reported to 
the government, he was rewarded by a pension of five 
shillings a-day for beating off the privateer, and sup- 
plied with five guns, which he was authorised to mount 
on his battery. 

Fontaine was not allowed to hold his post un- 
molested. It was at the remotest corner of the island, 
far from any town, and surrounded by a hostile popula- 
tion, in league with the enemy, whose ships were 



* The Tories were Irish rohbers or word Toruighuln", "to pursue for 
banditti who lived by plunder; the purposes of violence. " 
word being derived from the Irish 



376 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 



CHAP. XVI. 



constantly hovering about the coast. In the year 
following the above engagement, while Fontaine him- 
self was absent in London, a French ship entered 
Bantry Bay and cautiously approached Bearhaven. 
Fontaine's wife was, however, on the lookout, and 
detected the foreigner. She had the guns loaded and 
one of them fired off to show that the little garrison 
was on the alert. The Frenchman then veered off and 
made for Bear Island, where a party of the crew 
landed, stole some cattle, which they put on board, and 
sailed away again. 

A more serious assault was made on the fort about 
two years later. A company of soldiers was then 
quartered at the Half Barony in the neighbourhood, 
the captain of which boarded with the refugee family. 
On the 7th of October 1708, during the temporary 
absence of Fontaine as well as the captain, a French 
privateer made his appearance in the haven, and 
hoisted English colours. The ensign residing in 
the fort at the time, deceived by the stratagem, 
went on board, when he was immediately made a 
prisoner. He was plied with drink and became intoxi- 
cated, when he revealed the fact that there was no 
officer in command of the fort. The crew of the 
privateer were principally Irish, and they determined to 
attack the place at midnight, for which purpose a party 
of them landed. Fontaine had, however, by this time 
returned, and was on the alert. He hailed the advanc- 
ing party through a speaking-trumpet, and, no answer 
being returned, he ordered fire to be opened on them. 



CHAP. XVI. 



JAMES FONTAINE. 



377 



The assailants then divided into six detachments, one 
of which set fire to the offices and stables ; the house- 
hold servants, under the direction of Madame Fontaine, 
protecting the dwelling-house from conflagration. The 
men within fired from the windows and loopholes, but 
the smoke was so thick that they could only fire at 
random. Some of the privateer's men succeeded in 
making a breach with a crowbar in the wall of the 
house, but they were saluted with so rapid a fire 
through the opening that they suspected there must be 
a party of soldiers in the house, and they retired. 
They advanced again, and summoned the besieged to 
surrender, offering fair terms. Fontaine approached 
the French for the purpose of parley, when one of the 
Irish lieutenants took aim and fired at him. This 
treachery made the Fontaines resume the defensive, 
which they continued without intermission for some 
hours ; when, no help arriving, Fontaine found himself 
under the necessity of surrendering, conditional upon 
himself and his two sons, with their two followers, march- 
ing out with the honours of war. No sooner, however, 
had the house been surrendered, than Fontaine, his 
sons, and their followers, were at once made prisoners, 
and the dwelling was given up to plunder. 

Fontaine protested against this violation of the 
treaty, but it was of no use. The leader of the French 
party said to him, " Your name has become so noto- 
rious among the privateers of St. Malo, that I dare not 
return to the vessel without you. The captain s order 
was peremptory, to bring you on board dead or alive." 



378 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



Fontaine and his sons were accordingly taken on board 
as prisoners ; and when he appeared on the deck, the 
crew set up a shout of " Vive le Koi." On this, Fon- 
taine called out to them, " Gentlemen, how long is it 
since victories have become so rare in France, that you 
need to make a triumph of such an affair as this ? A 
glorious feat indeed ! Eighty men, accustomed to war, 
have succeeded in compelling one poor pastor, four 
cowherds, and five children, to surrender upon terms !" 
Fontaine again expostulated with the captain, and 
informed him that, being held a prisoner in breach of 
the treaty under which he had surrendered, he must be 
prepared for the retaliation of the English government 
upon French prisoners of war. The captain would not, 
however, give up Fontaine without a ransom, and de- 
manded £100. Madame Fontaine contrived to borrow 
£30, and sent it to the captain, with a promise of the 
remainder; but the captain could not wait, and he 
liberated Fontaine, but carried off his son Pierre to St. 
Malo, as a hostage for the payment of the balance. 

When the news of this attack of the fort at Bear- 
haven reached the English government, and they were 
informed of the violation of the conditions under which 
Fontaine had surrendered, they ordered the French 
officers at Kinsale and Plymouth to be put in irons 
until Fontaine's son was sent back. This produced 
an immediate effect. In the course of a few months 
Pierre Fontaine was set at liberty and returned to his 
parents, and the balance of the ransom was never claimed. 
The commander of the forces in Ireland made Fontaine 



CHAP. XVI. 



JAMES FONTAINE. 



370 



an immediate grant of £100, to relieve him in the 
destitute state to which he had been reduced by the 
plunder of his dwelling : the county of Cork afterwards 
paid him £500 as damages, on its being proved that 
Irishmen had been principally concerned in the attack 
and robbery ; and Fontaine's two sons were awarded 
the position and rights of half-pay officers, while his 
own pension was continued. The fort at Bearhaven 3 
having been completely desolated, was abandoned : 
and Fontaine, with the grant made him by govern- 
ment, and the sum awarded him by the county, left 
the lawless neighbourhood which he had so long 
laboured to improve and to defend, and proceeded to 
Dublin, where he settled for the remainder of his life 
as a teacher of languages, mathematics, and fortifica- 
tion. The school proved highly successful, and he 
ended his days in peace. His noble wife died in 1721, 
and he himself followed her shortly after, respected and 
beloved by all who knew him."" 

\Ye return to the subject of the settlements made 



* Nearly all Fontaine's near rela- 
tives took refuge in England. His 
mother and three of his brothers were 
refugees in London. One of them 
afterwards "became a Protestant minis- 
ter in Germany. One of his uncles, 
Peter, was pastor of the Pest House 
Chapel in London. Two aunts — one 
a widow, the other married to a refugee 
merchant — were also settled in London. 
Fontaine's sons and daughters mostly 
emigrated to Virginia, where their 
descendants are still to be found. 
His daughter Mary Anne married the 



Per. James Maury, Fredericks ville 
Parish, Louisa County, Virginia, from 
whom Matthew Fontaine Maury, 
LL.D., lately Captain in the Con- 
federate States navy, and author of 
The Physical Geography of the Sea, is 
lineally descended. The above facts 
are taken from the ' ;< Memoirs of a 
Huguenot Family; translated and 
compiled from the original Autobio- 
graphy of the Eev. James Fontaine, 
and other family manuscripts, by An t x 
Hatjry" (another of the descendants 
of Fontaine) : New York, 1S53. 



380 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



by other refugees in the southern parts of Ireland. In 
1697, about fifty retired officers, who had served in the 
army of William III., settled with their families at 
Youghal, on the invitation of the mayor and corpora- 
tion, who offered them the freedom of the town on 
payment of the nominal sum of sixpence each. It does 
not appear that the refugees were sufficiently numerous 
to maintain a pastor, though the Eev. Arthur d'Anvers 
for some time privately ministered to them. From the 
circumstance principally of their comparatively small 
number, they speedily ceased to exist as a distinc- 
tive portion of the community, though names of French 
origin are still common in the town, and many occur 
in the local registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 
of about a hundred years ago. 

The French refugee colony at Waterford was of 
considerably greater importance. Being favourably 
situated for trade near the mouth of the river Suir, 
with a rich agricultural country behind it, that town 
offered many inducements to the refugee merchants and 
traders to settle there. In the Act passed by the Irish 
Parliament in 1662, and re-enacted in 1672, "for en- 
couraging Protestant strangers and others to inhabit 
Ireland," Waterford is specially named as one of the 
cities selected for the settlement of the refugees. Some 
twenty years later, in 1693, the corporation of Water- 
ford, being desirous not only that the disbanded 
Huguenot officers and soldiers should settle in the 
place, but also that those skilled in arts and manu- 
factures should become citizens, ordered " that the city 



CHAP. XVI. 



COLONY AT WATERFORD. 



381 



and liberties clo provide habitations for fifty families of 
the French Protestants to drive a trade of linen-manu- 
facture, — they bringing with them a stock of money 
and materials for their subsistence until flax can be 
sown and produced on the lands adjacent; and that 
the freedom of the city be given them gratis." At the 
same time, the choir of the old Franciscan monastery 
was assigned to them, with the assent of the bishop, 
for the purpose of a French church, the corporation 
guaranteeing a stipend of £40 a-year towards the sup- 
port of a pastor. 

These liberal measures had the effect of inducing a 
considerable number of refugees to establish themselves 
at Waterford and carry on various branches of trade and 
manufacture. Some of them became leading merchants 
in the place, and rose to wealth and distinction. Thus, 
John Espaignet was sheriff of the city in 1 707 ; and the 
two brothers Vashon served, the one as mayor in 1726, 
the other as sheriff in 1735. The foreign wine-trade of 
the south of Ireland was almost exclusively conducted 
through Waterford by the French wine-merchants, some 
of their principal stores being in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of the French church. The refugees also 
made vigorous efforts to establish the linen-manufacture 
in Waterford, in which they were encouraged by the 
Irish Parliament ; and for many years linen was one 
of the staple trades of the place, though it has ceased 
since the introduction of power-looms. 

Another colony of the refugees was established at 
Portarlington, which, town they may almost be said to 



382 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



have founded. The first settlers consisted principally 
of retired French officers as well as privates, who had 
served in the army of King William. We have already 
referred to the circumstances connected with the for- 
mation of this colony by the Marquis de Ruvigny, 
created Earl of Galway, to whom William granted the 
estate of Portaiiington, which had become forfeited to 
the crown by the treason and outlawry of Sir Patrick 
Grant, its former owner. Although the grant was 
revoked by the English Parliament, and the earl ceased 
to own the Portarlington estate, he nevertheless con- 
tinued to take the same warm interest as before in the 
prosperity of the refugee colony.* 

Among the early settlers at Portarlington were the 
Marquis de Paray, the Sieur de Hauteville, Louis le 
Blanc, Sieur de Perce, Charles de Ponthieu, Captain 
d'Alnuis and his brother, Abel Pelissier, David d'Arripe, 
Ruben de la Rochefoucauld, the Sieur de la Boissiere, 
Guy de la Blachiere de Bonneval, Dumont de Bosta- 
quet, Franquefort, Chateauneuf, La Beaume, Montpeton 



* The Bulletin de la Societe de VHis- 
toire du Protestantisme Francais (1861, 
p. 69) contains a letter addressed by 
the Earl of Galway to David Barbut, a 
refugee residing at Berne, in January 
1693, wherein he informs him that 
King William is greatly concerned at 
the distress of the French refugees 
in Switzerland, and desires that 600 
families should proceed to Ireland 
and settle there. He adds, that 
the king has recommended the Pro- 
testant princes of Germany, and the 
States -General of Holland to pay the 
expense of the transport of these 



families to the sea-bord, after which, 
the means would be provided for their 
embarkation into Ireland. " The 
king," said he, " is so touched at the 
misery with which these families are 
threatened where they are, and per- 
ceives so clearly how valuable their 
settlement would be in his kingdom 
of Ireland, that he is resolved to pro- 
vide all the money that may be re- 
quired for the purpose. We must not 
lose any time in the matter, and I hope 
that by the month of April, or May 
at the latest, these families will be on 
their way to join us." 



chap. xvi. COL ONY AT POR TA RUNG TON. 



383 



chi Languedoc, Vicomte de Laval, Pierre Goulin, Jean la 
Ferriere, De Gaudry, J ean Lafaurie, Abel de Ligonier de 
Vignoles,"* Anthoine de Ligonier, and numerous others. 

The greater number of these noblemen and gentle- 
men had served with distinction under the Duke of 
Schomberg, La Melonniere, La Caillemotte, Cambon,and 
other commanders, in the service of William III. They 
had been for the most part men of considerable estate 
in their own country, and were now content to live as 
exiles on the half-pay granted them by the country of 
their adoption. When they first came into the neigh- 
bourhood, the town of Portarlington could scarcely be 
said to exist. The village of Cootletoodra, as it was 
formerly called, was only a collection of miserable huts 
unfit for human residence ; and until the dwellings 
designed for the reception of the exiles by the Earl of 
Gal way could be built, they resided in the adjoining 
villages of Doolough, Monasterevin, Cloneygown, and 
the ancient village of Lea. 

The new Portarlington shortly became the model 
town of the district. The dwellings of the strangers 
were distinguished for their neatness and comfort ; and 
their farms and gardens were patterns of tidiness and 
high culture. They introduced new fruit-trees from 
abroad ; amongst others the black Italian walnut and 
the jargonelle pear — specimens of which still flourish 

* The Des Vignoles were of noble were Huguenot officers who served 

birth, descended from the celebrated under William III. Charles Vignoles, 

Estienne des Vignolles of Languedoc, C.E., is descended from the elder 

where the family possessed large brother, and the Dean of Ossory from 

estates. Two brothers of the name the younger. 



384 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. chap. xvi. 



at Portarlington in vigorous old age. The original 
planter of these trees fought at the Boyne as an ensign 
in the regiment of La Melonniere. The immigrants 
also introduced the " espalier " with great success, and 
their fruit became widely celebrated. Another favourite 
branch of culture was flowers, of which they imported 
many new sorts, while their vegetables were unmatched 
in Ireland. 

The exiles formed a highly select society, composed, 
as it was, of ladies and gentlemen of high culture, of pure 
morals, and of gentle birth and manners — so different 
from the roystering Irish gentry of the time. Though 
they had suffered grievous wrongs at the hands of their 
own country, they were contented, cheerful, and even 
gay. Traditions still exist of the military refugees, in 
their scarlet cloaks, sitting in groups under the old oaks 
in the market-place, sipping tea out of their small china 
cups. They had also their balls, and ordinaries, and 
" ridottos " (places of pleasant resort) ; and a great deal 
of pleasant visiting went on amongst them. They con- 
tinued to enjoy their favourite wine of Bordeaux, which 
was imported for them in considerable quantities by 
their fellow-exiles, the French wine-merchants of Water- 
ford and Dublin/'' 

There were also numerous refugees of humbler class 

* Thus we find Monsieur Pennetes, corns to £8 ; une denry-barrique de 

a Dublin wine-merchant, sending to selle de France, 6s." In 1757, Joshua 

a Portarlington colonist, in 1726, " 3 Pilot, a retired paymaster and surgeon 

gals. Frontignac at 6s. ; oxhead of in Battereau's regiment, imported 

clarate, prise agreed, £11 ; a dousen largely direct from Messrs. Barton and 

of wine, 1 Is. ; oxhead of Benicarlo Co. of Bordeaux. — Sir,E. D. Bueough 

at 2s. 6d. per gal., allowing 64 gals., in Ulster Journal of Archceology. 



chap. xvi. THE COLONY AT PORTARLINGTON. 



385 



settled in the place, who carried on various trades. 
Thus the Fouberts carried on a manufacture of linen, 
and many of the minor tradesmen were French — bakers, 
butchers, masons, smiths, carpenters, tailors, and shoe- 
makers. The Blancs, butchers, transmitted the busi- 
ness from father to son for more than 150 years ; and 
they are still recognisable at Portarlington under the 
name of Blong. The Micheaus, farmers, had been 
tenants on the estates of the Kobillard family in Cham- 
pagne ; and they were now tenants of the same family 
at Portarlington. One of the Micheaus was sexton of 
the French church of the town until within the last few 
years. La Borde the mason, Capel the blacksmith, and 
Gautier the carpenter, came from the neighbourhood 
of Bordeaux ; and their handiwork, much of which still 
exists at Portarlington and the neighbourhood, bears 
indications of their foreign training. 

The refugees, as was their invariable practice where 
they settled in sufficient numbers, early formed them- 
selves into a congregation at Portarlington, and a church 
was erected for their accommodation, in which a long 
succession of able ministers officiated, the last of whom 
was Charles de Vignoles,* afterwards Dean of Ossory. 
The service was conducted in French down to the 
year 1817, since which it has been discontinued, the 
language having by that time become an almost un- 
known tongue in the neighbourhood. 

* The register of the French church the names, families, and localities in 
at Portarlington is still preserved. France from whence the refugees 
It commenced in 1694, and records came. " The first volume of the 

2 c 



386 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 



CHAP. XVI. 



Besides a church, the refugees also possessed a 
school, which long enjoyed a high reputation for the 
classical education which it provided for the rising 
generation. At an early period, the boys seem to have 
been clothed as well as educated, the memorandum- 
book of an old officer of the Boyne containing an 
entry, April 20th, 1727, "making six sutes of cloths 
for ye blewbois, at 18 pee. per sute, 00 : 09 : 00." M. 
Le Fevre, founder of the Charter Schools, was the first 
schoolmaster in Portarhnoton. He is said to have 

o 

been the father of Sterne's "poor sick lieutenant."' 5 ' 5 ' The 
Bonnevaux and Tersons were also amongst the subse- 



register," says Sir E. D. Burough, 
" still wears the coarse and primitive 
brown paper cover in which it was 
originally invested by its foreign 
guardians 161 years since. One side 



bears the following inscription in 



large capitals: — Livr. . 
Baft. . . . Mariag. 
Et Enterrements, 1694." 



The following is the list of pastors of the French church 



-1696, 



Depuis 1694- 
5 Octre. 1696— 
1 Deere. 1696—1698, 
15 May 1698—1698, 



Gfflet. 
Belaquiere. 
Gillet. 
Durassus. 
Ducasse. 

26 Juin 1698—1702, Daillon. 

3 Octre. 1702—1729, De Bonneval. 
14 Augt. 1729—1739, Des Voeux. 
16 Febre. 1739-40—1767, Caillard. 
2 Sep. 1767—1743, Des Voeux. 
Jan. 1793 — 1817, Vignoles pere. 

1817— Charles Vignoles Jih 



1 



\- Calvinists. 



- Anglicans. 



J 



De; 



* The Portarlington Register con- 
tains the following record : — " Sepul- 
ture du Diinanche 23e Mars 1717-18. 
Le Samedy 22e du present mois entre 
minuet et une heure, est mort en la 
foy du Seigneur et dans l'esperance de 
la glorieuse resurrection, Mousieur 



Favre, Lieutenant a la pention, dont 
l'ame estait allee a Dieu, son corps a 
ete enterre par Monsieur Bonneval, 
niinistre de cette Eglise dans le cemi- 
tiere de ce lieu. A. Ligonier Bonneval, 
min. Louis Buliod." 



chap. xvi. THE COLONY AT PORTARLINGTON. 387 



quent teachers, and many of the principal Protestant 
families of Ireland passed under their hands. Among 
the more distinguished men who received the best 
part of their education at Portarlington may be men- 
tioned the Marquis of Wellesley and his brother the 
Earl of Mornington, the Marquis of Westmeath, the 
Honourable John Wilson Croker, Sir Henry Ellis (of 
the British Museum), Daniel W. Webber, and many 
others. 

Lady Morgan, referring in her Memoirs to the 
French colony at Portarlington, observes — " The dis- 
persion of the French Huguenots, who settled in great 
numbers in Ireland, was one of the greatest boons 
conferred by the misgovernment of other countries 
upon our own. Eminent preachers, eminent lawyers, 
and clever statesmen, whose names are not unknown to 
the literature and science of France, occupied high 
places in the professions in Dublin. Of these I may 
mention, as personal acquaintances, the Saurins, the 
Lefanus, Espinasses, Favers, Corneilles, Le Bas, and 
many others, whose families still remain in the Irish 
metropolis."* 

It is indeed to be regretted that the settlements of 
the refugee French and Flemings in Ireland were so 
much smaller than those which they effected in different 
parts of England, otherwise the condition of that 
unfortunate country would probably have been very 
different from what we now find it. The only part of 
Ireland in which the Huguenots left a permanent 

* Lady Morgan — Memoirs, i. 106. 



388 



SETTLEMENTS IN IRELAND. 



CHAP. XVI. 



impression was in the north, where the branches of 
industry which they planted took firm root, and con- 
tinue to flourish with extraordinary vigour to this day. 
But in the south it was very different. Though the 
natural facilities for trade at Cork, Limerick, and 
Waterford, were much greater than those of the northern 
towns, the refugees never obtained any firm footing or 
made any satisfactory progress in that quarter, and their 
colonies there only maintained a sickly existence, and 
gradually fell into decay. One has only to look at 
Belfast and the busy hives of industry in that neigh- 
bourhood, and note the condition of the northern 
province of Ulster — existing under precisely the same 
laws as govern the south — to observe how seriously 
the social progress of Ireland has been affected by the 
want of that remunerative employment which the re- 
fugees were so instrumental in providing in all the 
districts in which they settled, wherever they found a 
population willing to be taught by them, and to follow 
in the path which they undeviatingly pursued — of 
peaceful, contented, and honourable industry. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES. 

Although 300 years have passed since the first 
religious persecutions in Flanders and France com- 
pelled so large a number of Protestants to fly from 
those countries and take refuge in England, and 
although 180 years have passed since the second great 
emigration from France took place in the reign of Louis 
XIV., the descendants of the "gentle and profitable 
strangers" are still recognisable amongst us. In the 
course of the generations which have come and gone 
since the dates of their original settlement, they have 
laboured diligently and skilfully, greatly to the advan- 
tage of British trade, commerce, and manufactures ; 
while there is scarcely a branch of literature, science, 
and art, in which they have not distinguished them- 
selves. 

Three hundred years form a long period in the 
life of a nation. During that time many of the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of the original refugees must 
necessarily have become effaced in the persons of their 
descendants. Indeed, by far the greater number of 
them before long became completely Anglicised, and 
ceased to be traceable except by their names; and 



390 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



even these have for the most part become converted 
into names of English sound. 

So long as the foreigners continued to cherish the 
hope of returning to their native country on the 
possible cessation of the persecutions there, they waited 
and worked on with that end in view. But as the 
persecutions only waxed hotter, they at length gra- 
dually gave up all hope of return. They claimed and 
obtained letters of naturalisation; and though many 
of them continued for several generations to worship in 
their native language, they were content to live and 
die English subjects. Their children grew up amidst 
English associations, and they desired to forget that 
their fathers had been fugitives and foreigners in the 
land. They cared not to remember the language or 
to retain the names which marked them as distinct 
from the people amongst whom they lived ; and hence 
many of the descendants of the refugees, in the second 
or third generation, abandoned their foreign names, 
while they gradually ceased to frequent the distinctive 
places of worship which their fathers had founded. 

Indeed, many of the first Flemings had no sooner 
settled in England and become naturalised, than they 
threw off their foreign names and assumed English 
ones instead. Thus, as we have seen, Hoek, the 
Flemish brewer in Southwark, assumed the name of 
Leeke ; while Haestricht, the Flemish manufacturer at 
Bow, took that of James. Mr. Prynie, formerly pro- 
fessor of political economy in the University of 
Cambridge, and representative of that town in Parlia- 



CHAP. XVII. 



FLEMISH NAMES. 



391 



ment, whose ancestors were refugees from Ypres in 
Flanders, has informed us that his grandfather dropped 
the " de la " originally prefixed to the family name, in 
consequence of the strong anti-Gallican feeling which 
prevailed in this country during the Seven Years' 
War of 1756-63, though his son has since assumed it * 
and the same circumstance doubtless led many others 
to change their foreign names to those of English 
sound. 

Nevertheless, a large number of purely Flemish 
names, though it may be with English modifications, 
are still to be found in various parts of England and 
Ireland where the foreigners originally settled. These 
have been on the whole better preserved in rural 
districts than in London, where the social friction was 
greater, and more speedily rubbed off the foreign 
peculiarities. In the lace towns of the west of England, 
such names as Eaymond, Spiller, Brock, Stocker, Groot, 
Eochett, and Kettel, are still common ; and the same 
trade has continued in their families for many genera- 
tions. The Walloon Gloupes, who settled in Wiltshire 
as cloth-makers more than 300 years since, are still 
known there as the G-uppys. 

In the account of the early refugee Protestants 
given in the preceding pages, it has been pointed out 
that the first settlers in England came principally from 
Lille, Turcoing, and the towns situated along both 
sides of the present French frontier — the country of 
the French Walloons, but then subject to the crown of 
Spain. Among the first of these refugees was one 



392 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES. chai\ xvii. 



Laurent des Bouveryes,"* a native of Sainghin near 
Lille. He first settled at Sandwich as a maker of 
serges in 1567; after which, in the following year, he 
removed to Canterbury to join the Walloon settlement 
there. The Des Bouveryes family prospered greatly. 
In the third generation, we find Edward, grandson of 
the refugee, a wealthy Turkey merchant of London. 
In the fourth generation, the head of the family was 
created a baronet; in the fifth, a viscount; and in 
the sixth, an earl ; the original Laurent des Bouveryes 
being at this day represented in the House of Lords by 
the Earl of Eadnor. 

About the same time that the Des Bouveryes came 
into England from Lille, the Hugessens arrived from 
Dunkirk, and settled at Dover. They afterwards re- 
moved to Sandwich, where the family prospered ; and 
in course of a few generations we find them enrolled 
among the county aristocracy of Kent, and their name 
borne by the ancient family of the Knatchbulls. It 
is not the least remarkable circumstance connected 
with this family, that a member of it now represents 
the borough of Sandwich, — one of the earliest seats of 
the refugees in England. 

Among other notable Flemish immigrants may be 
numbered the Houblons, who gave the Bank of England 
its first governor, and from one of whose daughters 



* The Bouveries were men of mark 
in their native country. Thus in the 
Histoire de Cambray et du Cambrensis, 
published in 1664, it is stated, " La 



famille de Bouverie est reconnu pas- 
ser plusiers siecles entre les patrices 
de Cambray." 



CHAP. XVII. 



FLEMISH FAMILIES. 



393 



the late Lord Palmerston was lineally descended. * 
The Van Sittarts, Jansens, Courteens, Van Milderts, 
Vanlores, Corsellis, and Vannecks,f were widely and 
honourably known in their day as London bankers or 
merchants. Sir Matthew Decker, besides being emi- 
nent as a London merchant, was distinguished for the 
excellence of his writings on commercial subjects, then 
little understood ; and he made a useful member of 
Parliament, having been elected for Bishop's Castle in 
1719. 

Various members of the present landed gentry 
trace their descent from the Flemish refugees. Thus 
Jacques Hoste, the founder of the present family 
(represented by Sir W. L. S. Hoste, Bart.), fled 
from Bruges, of which his father was governor, 
in 1569 ; the Tyssens (now represented by W. G. 
Tyssen Amhurst, Esq. of Foulden) fled from Ghent; 
and the Crusos of Norfolk fled from Hownescout in 
Flanders, — all to take refuge in England. 

Among artists, architects, and engineers of Flemish 
descent we find Grinling Gibbons, the wood-sculptor ; 
Mark Gerrard, the portrait-painter; Sir John Vanbrugh, 
the architect and play- writer ; Bichard Cosway, B.A.,J 
the miniature-painter ; and Sir Cornelius Vermuyden 
and Westerdyke, the engineers employed in the reclam- 

* Anne, sister and heir of Sir presented in the peerage by Baron 
Richard Hublon, was married to Henry Himtingfield. 

Temple, created Lord Palmerston in % Cosway belonged to a family, 
1722. ' originally Flemish, long settled at 

Tiverton, Devon. His father was 
f The Vanneck family is now re- master of the grammar-school there. 



394 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



ation of the drowned lands in the Fen districts. The 
Tradescants, the celebrated antiquarians, were also of 
of the same origin.* 

One of the most distinguished families in the 
Netherlands was that of the De Grotes or Groots, of 
which Hugo Grotius was an illustrious member. When 
the Spanish persecutions were at their height in the 
Low Countries, several of the Protestant De Grotes, who 
were eminent as merchants at Antwerp, fled from that 
city, and took refuge, some in England and others in 
Germany. Several of the Flemish De Grotes had 
before then settled in England. Thus, among the letters 
of Denization contained in Mr. Brewer s Calendar of 
State Papers, Henry VIII., we find the following : — 

"Ambrose de Grote, merchant, of the Duchy of Brabant 
(Letters of Denization, Patent 11th June 1510, 2 Henry VIII.) 

"12 Feby. 1512-13. — Protection for one year for Ambrose 
and Peter de Grote, merchants of Andwarp, in Brabant, going in 
the retinue of Sir Gilbert Talbot, Deputy of Calais." 

One of the refugee Grotes is supposed to have 
settled as a merchant at Bremen, from which city the 
grandfather of the present Mr. Grote, the historian of 
Greece, came over to London early in the last century, 
and established first a mercantile house and afterwards 
a banking house, both of which flourished. But Mr. 

* The Tatler, vol. i. ed. 1786, p. of James I." Father and son were 

435, in a note, says — " John Trades- very ingenious persons, and worthy of 

cant senior is supposed to have been of esteem for their early promotion and 

Dutch or Flemish extraction, and to culture of the science of natural his- 

have settled in this kingdom probably tory and botany. The son formed 

about the end. of Queen Elizabeth's the Tradescant museum at Oxford, 
reign, or in the beginning of the reign 



CHAP. XVII. 



CHANGES OF NAME. 



395 



Grote is also of Huguenot blood, being descended by 
his mother's side from Colonel Blosset, commander of 
" Blosset's Foot/' the scion of an ancient Protestant 
family of Touraine, an officer in the army of Queen 
Anne, and the proprietor of a considerable estate in the 
county of Dublin, where he settled subsequent to the 
Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes. 

The great French immigration which ensued on the 
last-named event, being the most recent, has left much 
more noticeable traces in English family history and 
nomenclature, notwithstanding the large proportion of 
the refugees and their descendants who threw aside 
their French names and adopted them in an English 
translation. Thus, L'Oiseau became Bird ; Le Jeune, 
Young ; Le Blanc, White ; Le Noir, Black ; Le Maur, 
Brown ; Le Boy, King ; Lacroix, Cross ; Le Monnier, 
Miller ; Dulau, Waters ; and so on. Some of the Le- 
fevres changed their name to the English equivalent of 
Smith, as was the case with the ancestor of Sir Culling 
Eardley Smith, Bart., a French refugee whose original 
name was Le Fevre. Many names were strangely 
altered in their conversion from French into English. 
Jolifemme was freely translated into Pretyman — a name 
well known in the church; Momerie became Mummery, 
a common name at Dover ; and Planche became Plank, 
of which there are instances at Canterbury and South- 
ampton. At Oxford, the name of Willamise was traced 
back to Villebois ; Taillebois became Talboys ; Le Coq, 
Laycock ; Bouchier, Butcher or Boxer ; Coquerel, 
Cockerill ; Drouet, Drewitt ; D'Aeth, Death; D'Orleans, 



396 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



Dorling ; and Sauvage, Savage and Wild. Other 
pure French names were dreadfully vulgarised. Thus 
Conde became Cundy ; Chapuis, Shoppee ; De Preux, 
Diprose ; De Moulins, Mullins ; Pelletier, Pelter ; 
Huyghens, Huggins or Higgins ; and Beaufoy, 
Boffy!* 

Many pure French names have, however, been pre- 
served ; and one need only turn over the pages of a 
London Directory to recognise the large proportion 
which the descendants of the Huguenots continue to 
form of the modern population of the metropolis. But 
a short time since, in reading the report of a meeting 
of the district board of works at Wandsworth — where 
the refugees settled in such numbers as to form a con- 
siderable congregation — we recognised the names of 
Lobjoit, Baringer, Fourdrinier, Poupart, and others, 
unmistakeably French. Such names are constantly 
" cropping out " in modern literature, science, art, and 
manufactures. Thus we recognise those of Delaine t and 
Fonblanque in the press ; Eigaud and Roget in science ; 



* Mr. Lower, in his Patronymica 
Britannica, suggests that Richard De- 
spair, a poor man buried at East Grin- 
stead in 1726, was, in the orthography 
of his ancestors, a Despard. 

Among other conversions of French 
into English names may be mentioned 
the following : — Letellier, converted 
into Taylour ; Brasseur into Brassey ; 
Batchelier into Bachelor ; Lenoir into 
Lennard ; De Leau into Dillon ; Pi- 
gou into Pigott ; Breton into Britton ; 
Dieudonne into Dudney ; Baudoir 
into Baudry ; Guilbert into Gilbert ; 



Koch into Cox ; Renalls into Rey- 
nolds ; Merineau into Meryon ; Petit 
into Pettit ; Reveil into Revill ; Sa- 
veroy into Savery ; Gebon into Gib- 
bon ; Scardeville into Sharwell ; Le- 
verean into Lever ; and so on with 
many more. 

+ Peter de Laine, Esq. , a Protestant 
refugee, French tutor to the children 
of the Duke of York, obtained letters 
of naturalisation dated 14th October 
1681.— Duekant Coopee's Lists, etc., 
30-1. 



CHAP. XVII. 



THE QUEEN. 



397 



Dargan (originally Dargent) in railway construction ; 
Pigou in gunpowder ; Gillott in steel pens ; Courage in 
beer ; and Courtauld in silk. 

That the descendants of the Huguenots have vindi- 
cated and continued to practise that liberty of thought 
and worship for which their fathers sacrificed so much, 
is sufficiently obvious from the fact that among them 
we find men holding such widely different views as the 
brothers Newman, Father Faber and James Martineau, 
Dr. Pusey and the Eev. Hugh Stowell. The late Kev. 
Sydney Smith was a man of a different temperament 
from all these. He was himself accustomed to attri- 
bute much of his constitutional gaiety to the circum- 
stance of his grandfather having married Maria Olier, 
the daughter of a French Protestant refugee- — a woman 
whom he characterises as " of a noble countenance and 
as noble a mind." 

From the peerage to the working class, the de- 
scendants of the refugees are, to this day, found per- 
vading the various ranks of English society. The 
Queen of England herself is related to them, through 
her descent from Sophia Dorothea, grand-daughter of 
the Marquis d'Olbreuse, a Protestant nobleman of 
Poitou. The Marquis was one of the numerous French 
exiles who took refuge in Brandenburg on the Eevoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes. The Duke of Zell married 
his only daughter, whose issue was Sophia Dorothea, 
the wife of George Louis, Elector of Hanover, after- 
wards George I. of England. The son of Sophia 
Dorothea succeeded to the English throne as George 



398 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



II., and her daughter married Frederick William, after- 
wards king of Prussia ; and thus Huguenot blood con- 
tinues to run in the royal families of the two great 
Protestant states of the north. 

Several descendants of French Huguenots have be- 
come elevated to the British peerage. Of these the 
most ancient is the family of Trench, originally De la 
Tranche, the head of which is the Earl of Clancarty. 
Frederick, lord of La Tranche in Poitou, took refuge 
in England about the year 1574, shortly after the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew. He settled for a time in Nor- 
thumberland, from whence he passed over into Ireland. 
Of his descendants, one branch founded the peerage 
of Clancarty, and another that of Ashtown. Several 
members of the family have held high offices in church 
and state ; among whom may be mentioned Power le 
Poer Trench, the last Archbishop of Tuam, and the 
present Archbishop of Dublin, in whom the two 
Huguenot names of Trench and Chenevix are honour- 
ably united. 

Among other peers of Huguenot origin are Lord 
North wick, descended from John Eushout, a French 
refugee who established himself in London in the reign 
of Charles I. ; Lord de Blaquiere, descended from John 
de Blacquire, a scion of a noble French family, who 
settled as a merchant in London shortly after the Bevo- 
cation ; and Lord Eendlesham, descended from Peter 
Thelusson, grandson of a French refugee who about 
the same time took refuge in Switzerland. 

Besides these elevations to the peerage of descend- 



CHAP. XVII. 



THE NOBILITY. 



399 



ants of Huguenots in the direct male line, many of the 
daughters of distinguished refugees and their off- 
spring formed unions with noble families, and led to a 
further intermingling of the blood of the Huguenots 
with that of the English aristocracy. Thus the blood 
of the noble family of Euvigny mingles with that of 
Kussell* (Duke of Bedford) and Cavendish (Duke of 
Devonshire) ; of Schomberg with that of Osborne 
(Duke of Leeds) ; of Champagne (nee De la Eochefou- 
cauld) with that of Forbes (Earl of Granard) ; of Portal 
and Boileau with that of Elliot (Earl of Minto) ; of 
Auriol with that of Hay Drummond (Earl of Kinnoul) ; 
of D'Albiacf with that of Innes-Ker (Duke of Eox- 
burghe) ; of La Touche with that of Butler-Danvers 
(Earl of Lanesborough) ; of Montolieu with that of 
Murray (Lord Elibank) ; and so on in numerous other 
instances. 

Among recent peerages, are those of Taunton, 



* Rachel, daughter of Daniel de 
Massue, Seigneur de Euvigny, mar- 
ried Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of 
Southampton, in 1634. The countess 
died in 1637, leaving two daughters, 
one of whom, Elizabeth, afterwards 
married the Earl of Gainsborough, 
and the other, Eachel, married, first 
Lord Vaughan, and secondly William 
Lord Eussell, known as ' ' the patriot. " 
Every one has heard of his celebrated 
wife, the daughter of a Euvigny, 
whose son afterwards became second 
Duke of Bedford, and whose two 
daughters married, one the Duke of 
Devonshire, and the other the Mar- 
quis of Granby. 



f The D'Albiacs were a noble Pro- 
testant family of Nismes, who were 
almost exterminated at the Eevoca- 
tion. The father, mother, four sons, 
and three daughters, were murdered. 
Two sons escaped death, one of whom 
abjured Protestantism to save the 
family estate, the other sent his two 
children to England, despatching 
them in hampers. They arrived 
safely, and founded two families. The 
late Lieutenant-General Sir J. C. 
Dalbiac was the lineal descendant of 
one of them ; and his only daughter 
married the present Duke of Eox- 
burghe. 



400 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



Eversley, and Komilly, all direct descendants of Hugue- 
nots. The first Labouchere who settled in England 
was Peter Caesar Labouchere. He had originally taken 
refuge from the persecution in Holland, where he joined 
the celebrated house of Hope at Amsterdam ; and he 
came over to London as the representative of that firm. 
He eventually acquired wealth and distinction; and 
the head of the family now sits in the House of Lords 
as Baron Taunton. 

The Lefevres originally came from Poitou, where 
Sebastian Lefevre, M.D., was distinguished as a phy- 
sician. Pierre, one of his sons, suffered death for his 
religion. The father, with his two other sons, John 
and Isaac, took refuge in England. The former entered 
the army, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, 
serving under Marlborough all through his campaigns 
in the Low Countries. The second son, Isaac, from 
whom Lord Eversley (late Speaker of the House 
of Commons) is lineally descended, commenced and 
carried on successfully the business of a silk-manu- 
facturer in Spitalfields. John Lefevre, the last of the 
Spitalfields branch in the male line, possessed consider- 
able property at Old Ford, which is still in the family ; 
and his only daughter Helena having married Charles 
Shaw, of Lincoln s Inn, in 1789, their descendants have 
since borne the name and arms of the Lefevres."* 

The story of the Eomilly family is well known 
through the admirable autobiography left by the late 



* Duehant Cooper — Lists of Foreign Protestants and Aliens : Camden 
Society,, 1862. 



CHAP. XVII. 



THE ROM ILLY FAMILY. 



401 



Sir Samuel Komilly, and published by bis sons.'" The 
great-grandfatber of Sir Samuel was a considerable 
landed proprietor in tbe neighbourhood of Montpelier. 
Though a Protestant by conviction, he conformed to 
Koman Catholicism, with the object of saving the 
family property for the benefit of his only son. Yet 
he secretly worshipped after his own principles, as well 
as brought up his son in them. The youth indeed im- 
bibed Protestantism so deeply, that in the year 1701, 
when only seventeen, he went to Geneva for the sole 
purpose of receiving the sacrament,— the administration 
of the office by Protestant ministers in France render- 
ing them liable, if detected, to death or condemnation 
to the galleys for life. At Geneva, young Komilly met 
the celebrated preacher Saurin, then in the height of 
his fame, who happened to be there on a visit. The 
result of his conversations with Saurin was the forma- 
tion in his mind of a fixed determination to leave for 
ever his native country, his parents, and the inheritance 
which awaited him, and trust to his own industry for 
a subsistence in some foreign land, where he might be 
free to worship God according to conscience. 

Young Komilly accordingly set out for London ; 
and it was not until he had landed in England that he 
apprised his father of the resolution he had formed. 
After a few years' residence in London, where he married 
Judith de Monsallier, the daughter of another refugee, 
Mr. Komilly began the business of a wax-bleacher at 



* Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, ivritten by himself Edited by 
his Sons. 3 vols. London, 1840. 

2 D 



402 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvit. 



Hoxton, his father supplying him from time to time 
with money. But a sad reverse of fortune ensued on 
the death of his father, which shortly after took place. 
A distant relative, who was a catholic, took posses- 
sion of the family estate, and further remittances from 
France came to an end. Then followed difficulty, bank- 
ruptcy, and distress ; and the landowner's son, unable to 
bear up under his calamities, sank under them at an early 
age, leaving a widow and a family of eight children 
almost entirely unprovided for. 

His youngest son, Peter, father of the future Sir 
Samuel, was bound apprentice to a French refugee 
jeweller, named Lafosse, whose shop was in Broad 
Street. On arriving at manhood he went to Paris, 
where he worked as a journeyman, saving money 
enough to make an excursion as far south as Mont- 
pelier to view the family estate, now in the possession 
of strangers and irrecoverably lost, since it could only 
be redeemed, if at all, by apostasy. The jeweller 
eventually returned to London, married a Miss 
Garnault, like himself descended from a Protestant 
refugee, and began business on his own account. He 
seems to have enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity, 
living carefully and frugally, bringing up his family 
virtuously and religiously, and giving them as good an 
education as his comparatively slender means would 
admit, until the death of a rich relative of his wife, a 
Mr. de la Haize, who left considerable legacies to each 
member of the family, enabled Mr. Eomilly to article 
his son Samuel to a clerk in chancery, and enter upon 



CHAP. XVII. 



BOILEAU AND CRESPIGNY. 



403 



the profession in which he eventually acquired so much 
distinction. It is unnecessary to describe his career, 
which has been so simply and beautifully related by 
himself, or to trace the further history of the family, 
the head of which now sits in the House of Lords, 
under the title of Baron Eomilly. 

The baronetage, as well as the peerage, includes 
many descendants of the Huguenots. Jacques Boileau 
was Lord of Castelnau and St. Croix, near Nismes, in 
the neighbourhood of which the persecution long raged 
so furiously. He was the father of a family of twenty- 
two children, and could not readily leave France at the 
Eevocation; but, being known as a Protestant, and 
refusing to be converted, he was arrested and placed 
under restraint, in which condition he died. His son 
Charles fled, first into Holland, and afterwards into 
England, where he entered the army, obtained the 
rank of captain, and commanded a corps of French 
gentlemen under Marlborough at the battle of Blen- 
heim. He afterwards settled as a wine-merchant at 
Dublin, and was succeeded by his son. The family 
prospered ; and the great-grandson of Marlborough's 
captain was promoted to a baronetcy, — the present 
wearer of the title being Sir John Boileau. 

The Crespignys also belonged to a noble family in 
Lower Normandy. Claude Champion, Lord of Cres- 
pigny, was an officer in the French army ; and at the 
Eevocation he fled into England, accompanied by his 
wife, the Comtesse de Vierville, and a family of eight 
children, — two of whom were carried on board the ship 



404 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



in which they sailed, in baskets. De Crespigny entered 
the British army, and served as colonel under Marl- 
borough. The present head of the family is Sir C. W. 
Champion Crespigny, Bart. 

Elias Bouherau, M.D., an eminent physician in 
Eochelle, being debarred the practice of his profession 
by the edict of Louis XIV., fled into England with 
his wife and children, and settled in Ireland, where 
his descendants rose to fame and honour ; the present 
representative of the family being Sir E. E. Borough, 
Bart. 

Anthony Yinchon de Bacquenconrt, a man eminent 
for his learning, belonged to Bouen, of the parliament 
of which his father was president. He was originally 
a Boman Catholic, but being incensed at the pretended 
miracles wrought at the tomb of the Abbe Baris, he 
embraced Brotestantism, and fled from France. He 
settled in Dublin under the name of Des Voeux (the 
family surname), and became minister of the French 
church there; afterwards joining the Bev. John Beter 
Droz, another French refugee, in starting the first liter- 
ary journal that ever appeared in Ireland. The present 
representative of the family is Sir C. Des Yoeux, Bart. 

Among other baronets descended from French re- 
fugees, may be mentioned Sir John Lambert, descended 
from John Lambert of the Isle of Bhe ; Sir J. D. Legard, 
descended from John Legard, of ancient Norman lineage ; 
Sir A. J. de Hochepied Larpent, descended from John 
de Larpent of Caen ; and Sir Gr. S. Brooke Bechell, 
descended from the Bechels of Montauban in Languedoc. 



chap. xvii. HUGUEXOTS IX PA RLIA ME XT. 



405 



One of the members of the last-mentioned family having 
embraced Eoman Catholicism, his descendants still hold 
the family estate in France. 

Many of the refugees and their descendants have 
also sat in Parliament, and done good service there. 
Probably the first Huguenot member of the House of 
Commons was Philip Papillon, who sat for the city of 
London in 1695. The Papillons had suffered much for 
their religion in France, one of them having- lain in 
gaol at Avranches for three years. Various members 
of the family have since sat in Parliament for Dover, 
Komney, and Colchester. 

Of past members of Parliament, the Pechells have 
sat for Essex; the Fonneraus for Aldborough; the 
Durants for St. Ives and Evesham ; the Devagnes for 
Barnstaple ; the Maugers for Poole ; the La Eoches for 
Bodmin ; and the Amyands for Tregony, Bodmin, and 
Camelford. The last member of the Amyand family 
vras a baronet, who assumed the name of Cornewall on 
marcying Catherine, the heiress of Yelters Cornewall, 
Esq. of Moccas Court, Herefordshire ; and his only 
daughter having married Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis, 
became the mother of the late Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis, Bart. 

Many descendants of the Huguenots who had settled 
in Ireland also represented constituencies in the Irish 
Parliament. Thus, the La Touches sat for Catherton ; 
the Chaioneaus for Gowran ; and the celebrated Wil- 
liam Saurin, who filled the office of Irish Attorney- 
General for fourteen years, may be said to have repre- 



406 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



sented all Ireland. He was a man of great ability and 
distinguished patriotism ; and but for bis lack of 
ambition, would have been made a judge and a peer, 
both of which dignities he refused. Colonel Barre, 
who belonged to the refugee family of the name 
settled in Ireland, is best known by his parliamentary 
career in England. He was celebrated as an orator 
and a patriot, resisting to the utmost the passing of the 
American Stamp Act, which severed the connection 
between England and her American colonies. In 1776 
he held the office of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, and 
afterwards that of Paymaster to the Forces for England. 

Among more recent members of Parliament may be 
mentioned the names of Dupre, Gavin, Hugessen, 
Jervoise, Labouchere, Layard, Lefevre, Lefroy, Paget 
(of the Leicestershire family, formerly member for 
Nottingham), Pusey, Tomline, Eebow, and Yandeleur. 
Mr. Chevalier Cobbold is descended by the female side 
from Samuel le Chevalier, minister of the French church 
in London in 1591 ; one of whose descendants intro- 
duced the well-known Chevalier barley. Mr. Du Cane 
is descended from the same family to which the great 
admiral belonged. The first Du Cane or Du Quesne 
who fled into England for refuge settled at Canterbury, 
and afterwards in London. The head of this family 
was an alderman of the City in 1666, and in the next 
century his grandson Eichard sat for Colchester in 
Parliament ; the present representative of the Du Canes 
being the member for North Essex. 

Of the descendants of refugees who were dis- 



CHAP. XVII. 



HUGUENOT SCHOLARS. 



407 



tinguislied as divines, may be mentioned the Majendies, 
one of whom — John James, son of the pastor of the 
French church at Exeter — was Prebendary of Sarum, 
and a well-known author; and another, son of the 
Prebendary, became Bishop of Chester, and afterwards 
of Bangor. The Saurins also rose to eminence in the 
church, — Louis Saurin, minister of the French church 
in the Savoy, having been raised to the Deanery of St. 
Patrick's, Ardagh; while his son afterwards became 
Vicar of Belfast, and his grandson Bishop of Dromore. 
Eoger Du Quesne, grandson of the Marquis Du Quesne, 
was Yicar of East Tuddenham in Norfolk, and a Pre- 
bendary of Ely. 

One of the most eminent scholars of Huguenot 
origin was the Rev. Dr. J ortin, Archdeacon of London. 
He was the son of Rene Jortin, a refugee from Brittany, 
who served as secretary to three British admirals 
successively, and went down with Sir Cloudesley 
Shovel in the ship in which he was wrecked off the 
Scilly Isles in 1707. The son of Rene was entered a 
pupil at the Charter-House, and gave early indications 
of ability, which were justified by the distinction which 
he shortly after achieved at Cambridge. On the 
recommendation of Dr. Thirlby, young Jortin furnished 
Pope with translations from the commentary of Eus- 
tathius on Homer, as well as with notes for his trans- 
lation of the Iliad; but though Pope adapted them 
almost verbatim, he made no acknowledgment of the 
labours of his young helper. Shortly after, on a 
fellowship becoming vacant at Cambridge by the death 



408 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES. chap. xvii. 



of William Eosen, the descendant of another refugee, 
Jortin was appointed to it. A few years later, he was 
appointed to the vicarage of Swavesey, in Cambridge- 
shire, from whence he removed to the living of Kensing- 
ton near London. There he distinguished himself as 
the author of many learned works, of which the best 
known is his able and elaborate Life of Erasmus. He 
was eventually made Archdeacon of London, and died 
in 1770 at Kensington, where he was buried. 

Another celebrated divine was the Eev. George 
Lewis Fleury, Archdeacon of Waterford — "the good 
old archdeacon " he was called, — widely known for his 
piety, his charity, and his goodness. He was descended 
from Louis Fleury, pastor of Tours, who fled into 
England with his wife and family at the Eevocation. 
Several of the Fleurys are still clergymen in Ireland. 

The Maturins also have produced some illustrious 
men. The pastor Gabriel Maturin, from whom they 
are descended, lay a prisoner in the Bastile for twenty- 
six years on account of his religion. But he tenaciously 
refused to be converted, and was at length discharged, 
a cripple for life, — having lost the use of his limbs 
through his confinement. He contrived, however, to 
reach Ireland with some members of his former flock, 
and there he unexpectedly found his wife and two sons, 
of whom he had heard nothing during the long period 
of his imprisonment. His son Peter arrived at some 
distinction in the church, having become Dean of 
Killala ; and his grandson Gabriel James became Dean 
of St. Patrick's, Dublin. From him descended several 



CHAP. XVII. 



DUTEXS AXD ROMAIXE. 



409 



clergymen of eminence, one of them an eloquent 
preacher, who is also more generally known as the 
author of two remarkable works — Melmoth the Wan- 
derer, and the tragedy of Bertram. 

There were numerous other descendants of the 
refugees, clergymen and others, besides those already 
named, who distinguished themselves by their literary 
productions. Louis Dutens, who held the living of 
Elsdon in Northumberland, produced a successful 
tragedy, The Return of Ulysses, when only about 
eighteen years of age. In his later years, he was the 
author of numerous works of a more solid character, of 
which one of the best known is his Researches on the 
Origin of Discoveries attributed to the Moderns — a 
work full of learning and labour. He also wrote an 
Appeal to Good Sense, being a defence of Christianity 
against Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, besides 
numerous other works. 

The Kev. William Eomaine, Eector of St. Ann's, 
Blackfriars, was the son of a French refugee who had 
settled at Hartlepool as a merchant and corn-dealer. 
Mr. Eomaine was one of the most popular of London 
clergymen, and his Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith, 
is to this day a well-known and popular book among 
religious readers. Eomaine has been compared to " a 
diamond, rough often, but very pointed ; and the more 
he was broken by years, the more he appeared to shine." 
Much of his life was passed in polemical controversy, 
and in maintaining; the Calvinistic views which he so 
strongly held. He was a most diligent improver of 



410 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



time ; and besides being exemplary and indefatigable in 
performing the duties of his office, he left behind him 
a large number of able works, which were collected and 
published in 1796, in eight octavo volumes. 

The Eev. David Durand, F.E.S., was another 
voluminous writer on history, biography, philosophy," 
and science. Among his various works were those on 
The Philosophical Writings of Cicero, a History of 
the Sixteenth Century, and two volumes in continua- 
tion of Rapin's History of England. 

We have already spoken of the distinction achieved 
by Saurin and Eomilly at the Irish and English bar. 
But they did not stand alone. Of the numerous lawyers 
descended from the refugees, several have achieved no 
less eminence as judges than as pleaders. Of these, 
Baron Mazeres, appointed Curzitor Baron of the Ex- 
chequer in 1773, was one of the most illustrious. 
He was no less distinguished as a man of science than 
as a lawyer; his writings on arithmetic, algebra, and 
mathematics being still prized. 4 ' 5 " Justice Le Blanc 



* William Cobbett says of him — 
" I knew the Baron well. He was a 
most conscientious man ; he was, 
when I first knew him, still a very- 
clever man ; he retained all his facul- 
ties to a very great age. . . . He was 
the only man that I ever heard of 
who refused to have his salary aug- 
mented when an augmentation offered, 
and when all other such salaries were 
augmented. . . . The Baron was a 
most implacable enemy of the Boman 
Catholics, as catholics. There was 
rather a peculiar reason for this : his 



grandfather having been a French 
Huguenot, and having fled with his 
children to England, at the time 
of the Bevocation of the Edict of 
Nantes. . . . There was great excuse 
for the Baron. He had been told that 
his father and mother had been driven 
out of France by the Catholics ; and 
there was that mother dinning this 
in his ears, and all manner of horrible 
stories along with it, during all the 
tender years of his life. In short, 
the prejudice made part of his very 
frame. . . . The Baron was a very 



CHAP. XVII. 



ILLUSTRIOUS REFUGEES. 



411 



and Sir John Bosanquet were also of like French ex- 
traction, the latter being descended from Pierre Bosan- 
quet, of Lunel in Languedoc. Chief-Justice Lefroy 
and Justice Perrin, of the Irish bench, were in like 
manner descended from Huguenot families long settled 
in Ireland. 

A long list might be given, in addition to those 
already mentioned, of persons illustrious in literature, 
science, and the arts, who sprang from the same stock ; 
but we must be content with mentioning only a few. 
Peter Anthony Motteaux was not less distinguished 
for his enterprise as an East India merchant than for 
his ability as a writer ; and Sir John Charden, the 
traveller and author, afterwards jeweller to the court, 
was esteemed in his time as a man of great parts and 
of noble character. Garrick, the great English actor, 
was for the most part French, his real name being Gar- 
rigue, that of the Huguenot family to which he be- 
longed. The French D'Aubignes have given us several 
eminent men, bearing the name of Daubeny, celebrated 
in natural history. Among other men of science we 
note the names of Eigaud, Sivilian professor of astro- 
nomy at Oxford, and Eoget the physiologist, author of 

humane man ; his humanity made ally all gentleness and benevolence ; 

him assist to support the French and therefore he never resented what 

emigrant priests ; but, at the same I said to him on this subject (and 

time, he caused Sir Eichard Mus- which nobody else ever, I believe, 

grove's book against the Irish Catho- ventured to say to him) : but he did 

lies to be published at his own ex- not like it ; and he liked it the less 

pense. He and I never agreed upon because I certainly beat him in the 

this subject ; but this subject was, argument." — Rural Bides, ed. 1830, 

with him, a vital one. He had no pp. 251-3. 
asperity in his nature ; he was natur- 



412 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



one of the Bridgewater treatises. The Eev. Gr. J. Faber 
also, is descended from a French refugee who came over 
at the Eevocation. The Martineaus, so well known in 
English literature, are descended from Gaston Mar- 
tineau, a surgeon of Dieppe, who settled at Norwich in 
1685 ; and the Barbaukls are sprung from a minister 
of the French church of La Patente in London. Some 
of our best novelists have been of like French extrac- 
tion. Captain Marryatt and Captain Chamier, whose 
nautical tales have charmed so many English readers, 
were both descended from illustrious Huguenots, as 
was also Tom D'Urfey, the English song- writer ; and 
Miss Burney and Mrs. Kadcliffe"* were in like manner 
descended by the female side from Protestant refugees. 
It has also been supposed that the family of De Foe 
(or Vaux) were of Huguenot origin. 

Several men of considerable distinction in science 
and invention emanated from the Huguenot settlers in 
Spitalfields, which long continued to be the great 
French quarter of London. The French handloom 
weavers were in many respects a superior class of work- 
men, though their earnings were comparatively small 
in amount. Their employment was sedentary, and it 
was entirely of a domestic character, — the workshop 
being almost invariably situated over the dwelling, and 
approached through it. All the members of the family 
took part in the work, which was of such a nature as 
not to prevent conversation ; and when several looms 



* Mrs. Radcliffe was descended from a Walloon family, the De Witts, 
settled at Hatfield Chase. 



CHAP. XVII. 



THE SPITALFIELDS WEA VERS. 



413 



were worked on the same floor, this was generally of 
an intellectual character. One of the young people 
was usually appointed to read to those at work, it 
might be a book on history, or frequently a contro- 
versial work, — the refugee divines being among the 
most prolific authors of their time. Nor were the 
sufferings of the Huguenots at the galleys and in the 
prisons throughout France forgotten in the dwellings 
of the exiles, who often spoke of them to their children, 
and earnestly enjoined them to keep steadfast in the 
faith for which their fathers had endured so much. 

The circumstances in which the children of the 
Huguenot workmen were thus brought up — their 
domestic training, their religious discipline, and their 
school culture — rendered them for the most part 
intelligent and docile, while their industry was pro- 
verbial. The exiles indulged in simple pleasures, and 
were especially noted for their love of flowers. They 
vied with one another in the production of the finest 
plants ; and wherever they settled they usually set up 
a noricultural society to exhibit their products. One 
of the first societies of the kind in England was that 
established by the exiles in Spitalfields ; and when a 
body of them went over to Dublin to carry on the 
manufacture of poplins, they proceeded to set on foot 
the celebrated Flower Club which still exists in that 
city. Others of them, who settled in Manchester and 
Macclesfield, carried thither the same love of flowers 
and botany, which still continues so remarkably to 
characterise their descendants. 



414 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



Among the handloom weavers of Spitalfields were 
also to be found occasional inquirers into physical 
science, as well as several distinguished mathematicians. 
They were encouraged in these studies by the societies 
which were established for their cultivation ; a philo- 
sophical hall having been founded with that object 
in Crispin Street, Spitalfields. * Though Simpson and 
Edwards, both professors of mathematics at Woolwich, 
were not of French extraction, they were both silk- 
weavers in Spitalfields, and taught the mathematics 
there. The Hollands, however, were of pure French 
origin. The parents of John Holland were Pro- 
testant refugees from Normandy, from whence they 
came shortly after the Eevocation. His father was a 
silk-weaver, to which trade John was also brought up. 
From an early age he displayed a genius for construc- 
tion, and he embraced every opportunity of reading 
and studying books on geometry, mathematics, and 
general science. He was, however, unable to devote 
more than his spare moments to such subjects; and 
when he reached manhood and married, his increasing 
family compelled him to work at his loom more assidu- 
ously than ever. Nevertheless, he went on accumulating 
information, not only on mathematics, but on anatomy, 
natural history, astronomy, and optics, reading also exten- 
sively in divinity and ecclesiastical history. In order to 
read the New Testament in the original, he even learnt 
Greek, and to extend his knowledge of foreign litera- 
ture, he also learnt Latin, French, German, and Italian. 

* The building, which still exists, is now used as an earthenware-store. 



CHAP. XVII. 



JOHN DOLLOND. 



415 



John Dollond apprenticed his eldest son Peter to 
an optician; and on the expiry of the young mans 
apprenticeship, at the age of twenty, he opened a shop 
in Vine Street, Spitalfields. The business proved so 
prosperous that, shortly after, the elder Dollond was 
induced to leave his loom at the age of forty-six, and 
enter into partnership with his son as an optician. 
He was now enabled to devote himself wholly to 
his favourite studies, and to pursue as a business the 
art which before had occupied him chiefly as an 
amusement. 

One of the first subjects to which Dollond devoted 
himself was the improvement of the refracting tele- 
scope. He entered on a series of experiments, which 
extended over several years, at first without results; 
but at length, after " a resolute perseverance " (to use 
his own words), he made the decisive experiment which 
showed the error of Newton's conclusion as to the 
supposed law of refraction. The papers embodying 
Dollond's long succession of experiments were printed 
in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, and 
for the ]ast of them he was awarded the Eoyal Society's 
Copley medal. The result of the discovery was an 
immediate great improvement in the powers and ac- 
curacy of the telescope and microscope, of which the 
Dollond firm reaped the result in a large increase of 
business, which still continues in the family. 

We might greatly enlarge the list of descendants 
of the HuoTienots illustrious for their inventions in the 
arts, but will conclude with a brief account of the life 



416 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



of Lewis Paul, partly because it is little known, and 
also because bis invention of spinning by rollers, sub- 
sequently revived and successfully applied by Sir 
Bichard Arkwright, has exercised so extraordinary an 
influence on the manufacturing system of England and 
the world at large. 

Lewis Paul was the son of a French refugee who 
carried on business as a druggist in St. Paul's Church- 
yard. By this calling he acquired considerable property, 
and at his death he left his son under the guardianship 
of Lord Shaftesbury, and his brother the Honourable 
M. A. Cooper. We have no information as to his 
bringing up, but gather from his papers that Lewis led 
a gay life as a young man, fell into bad company, and, 
to pay his debts, mortgaged the valuable property in 
the parish of St. Bride s which his father had left him. 
He was evidently on the high road to ruin unless he 
reformed his habits, and that speedily. He had the 
courage to break off his connection with his former 
associates, though by that time his purse was nearly 
empty ; and he proceeded to apply himself to business 
connected with invention. 

In a letter addressed by him to the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, son of his guardian, many years later, Paul said : 
"As it too often happens with young sparks, I made 
but an ill use of my position and patronage. However, 
before the calamities I had laid the foundation of had 
reached me, I had exerted myself to the repair of my 
affairs with such ardour and success, that, notwith- 
standing the various impediments necessarily in the 



CHAP. XVII. 



LEWIS PAUL. 



417 



way of a person who had spent his time in every way 
so remote from the arts of trade, I nevertheless com- 
pleted a machine of great value in the most extensive 
manufacture of the kingdom. "* The machine to which 
he thus referred was that for spinning by rollers, on the 
principle subsequently adopted and completed by Sir 
Eichard Arkwright. 

It appears that the first invention of Paul was a 
machine for the pinking of crapes, tammies, etc., which 
brought him considerable profit. He employed a 
number of women to work the machine, amongst 
whom we find Mrs. Demoulins, a protegee of Dr. 
Johnson, frequently referred to in BosweLVs Life. It 
is probable that Pauls connection with the French 
manufacturers of Spitalfields served to direct his atten- 
tion to the invention of new methods of facilitating 
production, with the object of turning them to account 
in the raising of his depressed fortunes. 

Shortly after, we find him in communication with 
John Wyatt of Weeford, near Lichfield, afterwards of 
Birmingham, well known in his district as a highly 
ingenious and expert workman. It appears from the 
papers of Wyatt, which we have carefully examined,! 
that he had invented a file-cutting machine, which he 
agreed to dispose of, " when perfected," to one Eichard 
Heely of Birmingham, a gunmaker, for certain considera- 
tions. But Heely having become involved in difficulties, 



* Paper read by Robert Cole, f These papers have been kindly 
F.S.A., before the British Association lent us for examination by Mrs. Sil- 
at Leeds, 1858. vester, a descendant of John Wyatt. 

2 E 



418 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



the agreement came to an end, and Wyatt looked out 
for another customer for his invention. Such he found 
in Lewis Paul; and in September 1732, an agreement 
was entered into between them, in which Paul is 
described as " of the parish of St. Andrews, Holborn, 
gentleman/' and Wyatt as "of the parish of Weeford, 
county of Stafford, carpenter." By this agreement 
Paul bound himself to the same terms as Heely had 
done, though the machine was declared to be " not yet 
perfected and completed." Paul, however, being unable 
to pay the stipulated instalments, reconveyed the in- 
vention to Wyatt in the following year, by a deed in 
which it is described as " a certain tool or instrument 
intended to be used in and for the cutting of files." 4 '" 

We next find Paul residing at Birmingham, and 
Wyatt employed under his directions in bringing 
out a new invention for spinning fibrous materials by 
machinery. It is said that Wyatt had before that 
time made a model of such a machine while residing 
at Sutton Coldfield, by means of which he was enabled 
to spin thread successfully; and probably Paul was 
only acting on the suggestion first thrown out by 
Wyatt, in proceeding to join him for the purpose of 
bringing the machine to perfection. Both were equally 
short of money, but Paul had greater facilities for 
raising means amongst his London friends, at the same 
time that he carried on his business of pinking crape 
and tammies. Both were men of hot temper, and 
being hampered for want of money and struggling 

* Wyatt MSS. 



CHAP. XVII. 



LEWIS PAUL. 



419 



with difficulties, they often quarrelled violently, and 
usually ended by agreeing and working together again. 
The invention seems to have occupied the minds of 
both for more than four years, during which time they 
occasionally proceded to London, Paul to try and raise 
money amongst his friends, and Wyatt to visit the 
manufacturers' shops in Spitalfields and obtain practical 
hints from the manufacturers for the purposes of the 
machine. 

Paul returned to Birmingham, leaving Wyatt in 
London to proceed with "the work the former sending 
remittances in payment of Wyatt's agreed salary, ac- 
cording as the money could be raised. In one of Pauls 
letters, enclosing a remittance for salary and "work 
done," he says — "As to particulars, I daresay when 
you see Perriere's work youll remember the whole 
design I have laid down." In a letter written two 
days later, Paul says — " When I wrote you last, being 
in a good deal of haste, I apprehend that I omitted 
some directions necessary. A principal was, that you 
should take a lodging either where you are not known, 
or where you can have the highest confidence to remove 
the tool to, and to prepare that work, for I would not 
have it seen by anybody besides yourself for any 
reasons." Towards the end of the year 1737, Paul 
was still struggling with difficulties as to money, 
putting off Wyatt with excuses, assuring him that if 
it were possible to borrow he should be supplied forth- 
with, and that he himself was extremely anxious to be 
in town, but could not stir for want of the " primum 



420 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



mobile" In his next letter, all that he could send 
Wyatt was two guineas, which he had raised "with 
much difficulty;" but he hoped to have more soon, 
when he would immediately set out for London. 

In the beginning of 1738, Paul wrote to Wyatt in 
great joy, having been at length enabled to obtain a 
sum of money from Mr. Warren, a Birmingham book- 
seller ; but it had been advanced on the express con- 
dition that it was to be invested in Paul's crape busi- 
ness, over which Mr. Warren was to have control, 
excepting the sum of £70, which Paul was to be at 
liberty to employ for his own purposes. On the 
strength of this advance, he proceeded to ask Wyatt if 
he would engage to work for him at a salary for six 
months, with a view to the perfecting of the machine. 
Wyatt answered that he could give four days a-week, 
at 5s. a-day, to the forwarding of Paul's work, taking a 
payment of 17s. weekly on account, and leaving the 
rest to accumulate until Paul was able to pay him. 
This was a most generous offer on the part of Wyatt, 
who was labouring with self-denying zeal to perfect 
the invention, occasionally pawning his clothes to main- 
tain himself and wife until remittances arrived from 
Birmingham, — the suit which he wore being so ragged 
that he declared he was ashamed to be seen abroad 
ia it. 

In the meantime, Paul was impatient for the com- 
pletion of the model, which was delayed in consequence 
of the secrecy which was observed with respect to it, 
the whole of the work having to be done by Wyatt 



CHAP. XVII. 



SPINNING BY ROLLERS. 



421 



himself. At length the model was ready, and Paul 
proceeded to London to take out a patent for the 
invention of spinning wool and cotton by means of 
rollers. His petition was enrolled in January 1738, 
and the patent was issued in the month of July follow- 
ing. The process detailed in the specification is clearly 
akin to that afterwards revived by Arkwright, and by 
him turned to such profitable account. The sliver " is 
put between a pair of rollers/' . . , and " being turned 
round by their motion, draws in the raw mass of wool 
or cotton to be spun, in proportion to the velocity of 
such rollers;" and " a succession of other rollers, mov- 
ing proportionately faster than the rest, draw the rope, 
thread, or sliver into any degree of fineness that may 
be required;" in addition to which, "the bobbyn, 
spole, or quill, upon which the thread is spun, is so 
contrived as to draw faster than the first rollers give, 
and in such proportion as the sliver is proposed to be 
diminished." The whole principle of spinning by 
rollers is clearly embodied in this description; and that 
it was the inventiori of Lewis Paul is clear from a 
memorandum in the handwriting of John Wyatt, found 
amongst his papers, to the following effect : — 

" Thoughts originally Mr. PauTs. — 1. The joining of 
the rolls. 2. Their passing through cylinders. 3. The 
calculation of the wheels, by which means the bobbin 
draws faster than those cylinders : this, I presume, was 
picked up somewhere before 1 knew him." 

The rest of the details of , the invention were 
claimed by Wyatt — " the horizontal and tracer, the 



422 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



conic whorves," the proportional size of the spindle 
and bobbin, and sundry other mechanical details of the 
machine. 

But though Paul secured a patent for his invention, 
and sold sundry licenses to manufacturers to spin wool 
and cotton after his process, it does not appear that it 
proved very successful. James Johnson, a manu- 
facturer in Spitalfields, bought a license to use 150 
spindles. Warren, the Birmingham bookseller, took a 
license for 50 spindles, in consideration of the money 
owing to him by Paul; being induced to do so by the 
favourable report of Dr. James, of fever-powder cele- 
brity.'"" Edward Cave also, the printer of the Gentle- 
mans Magazine, was tempted to embark in the specu- 
lation. He bought from Paul a license for 250 spindles, 
and in 1740 he started a spinning-mill on Turnhill 
Brook, a little to the north of Fleet Bridge, at the back 
of Field Lane, Holborn. J ohn Wyatt was so sanguine 
as to the success of the invention, that he too, like War- 
ren, agreed to take a grant of 300 spindles in discharge 
of the debt of £820 which Paul by this time owed 
to him. 

But all the attempts made to spin by Paul's machine 
proved comparatively unsuccessful as regarded profit- 
able results. Johnson's mill in Spitalfields was acci- 

* Dr. James wrote to Mr. Warren for your grant : the sight of the thing 

thus : — " Yesterday I went to see Mr. is demonstration enough. I am cer- 

PauVs machine, which gave us all tain that if Paul could begin with ten 

entire satisfaction, both in regard to thousand pounds, he must, or at least 

the carding and spinning. You have might, get more money in twenty years 

nothing to do but to get a purchaser than the city of London is worth." 



CHAP. XVII. 



SPINNING-MILLS BEGUN. 



423 



dentally burnt down, and he did not care to repeat the 
experiment. Cave could not work his spindles to a 
profit, though the mill was superintended by Paul him- 
self ; and it was shortly given up. Wyatt was not 
more fortunate. He first started fifty spindles in a 
large warehouse near the Well in the Upper Priory, Bir- 
mingham. The movement was given to the machinery 
by two or more asses working round an axis, and 
required some ten girls to attend to the work. After a 
short trial, Wyatt found himself in difficulties and in 
debt, and a few months later we find him a prisoner in 
the Fleet. His assignees sold the spindles to a Mr. 
Samuel Touchet (a French refugee) of Northampton, 
whether they were removed from Birmingham ; and 
Wyatt, having taken the benefit of the Insolvent 
Debtors' Act, and obtained his discharge, went down to 
Northampton to superintend in person the erection and 
working of the spinning-factory. 

It is not necessary to describe the Northampton 
adventure. Suffice it to say, that after working for 
more than ten years,'" the factory was given up as a 
failure, Paul alleging that the chief cause lay in the 
mismanagement of the owners. Touchet was glad to get 
out of the concern at a loss ; on which Edward Cave, 
doubtless persuaded by Paul, entered upon a lease of 

* In 1757 we find John Wyatt, old gimcracks, which, by order of Mr. 

disgusted with the results of the spin- Yeo, I am directed to send to you. 

ning adventure, sending the remainder I most heartily wish Mr. Yeo better 

of his spindles to the manager of the success than any of his predecessors 

mill at Northampton : — " You have have had." 
herewith," he said, " a reversion of 



424 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



the factory ; but at his death shortly after, his brother 
Joseph, to whom the property devolved, became so dis- 
heartened, that he too resolved to abandon the enter- 
prise. Paul, still firmly believing in the soundness 
of his project, next took a lease of the Northampton 
mill for twenty-one years ; but, being unable to pay 
the rent, Cave put in a distress for the monies due to 
him. On this and other occasions, we find Dr. Johnson 
negotiating between Paul and the Caves, and endea- 
vouring to bring them to terms."" The machinery of 
the mill at Northampton was eventually sold for the 
price of the materials ; and the experiment, promising 
though it seemed, and embodying, as it did, the prin- 
ciple of an invention which has since enriched thousands, 
ended, for the time, in disaster to all concerned.t 



* BoswelVs Life of Johnson, by 
Choker. 1 vol. ed. 1853, pp. 43, 
101-2-3. 

+ So far as we can judge from the 
Wyatt MSS., Paul was the inventor 
of the principle of spinning by rollers, 
and Wyatt the skilled mechanic who 
embodied the principle in a working 
machine. In a letter, addressed by 
the latter to Sir H. Gongh, he de- 
scribes himself as " the principal 
agent, I might almost say the sole 
compiler, of the machine for spinning." 
Wyatt afterwards proved his ability 
both as a mechanic and an inventor. 
The machine for weighing loaded car- 
riages, still in use, was invented by 
him. Among his other inventions 
was a method of neutralising the fric- 
tion of wheels by surrounding the 
wearing parts of the axle with three 
or more cylinders enclosed in a steel 



box impervious to dust — an invention 
for which several patents have since 
been taken out, and in one of which 
Wyatt's expedient has been applied 
with success in railway turntables. An- 
other of his contrivances was a double 
lathe, of beautiful construction and 
arrangement, for cutting out of bone 
the mould in which a peculiar kind 
of button was formed, which proved of 
much use in the Birmingham trade. 
During the later years of his life he 
was employed by Matthew Boulton, 
to whom he was of great service in 
erecting the machinery for Soho. He 
died in 1766, and his funeral was at- 
tended by the principal inhabitants 
of Birmingham— Baskerville, the prin- 
ter (also descended from a French 
refugee), a man of eccentric character, 
arraying himself on the occasion in a 
splendid suit of gold lace. 



CHAP. XVII. 



THE HANDLOOM-WEAVERS. 



425 



Paul continued to add to his inventions. He 
invented a carding-machine in 1 748, which he patented; 
and, ten years later, he took out a second patent for a 
spinning-machine, substantially the same as the first, 
embodying many improvements in detail though not 
in principle. He did not, however, long survive the 
grant of this patent, but died shortly after, in April 
1759, at Brook Green, Kensington. 

The invention at which Paul had laboured with such 
unfortunate results, was at length perfected and intro- 
duced into successful practice by Arkwright in 1768, 
his patent for spinning by rollers having been taken 
out in the following year. In course of time the inven- 
tion was generally adopted, and the cotton-manufacture 
became one of the great staple trades of the north of 
England. The invention of the steam-engine by Watt 
gave another great impulse to this branch of industry ; 
and the further invention of the power-loom gave almost 
the death-blow to handloom-weaving. 

From that time the manufactures of Spitalfields, 
of Dublin, and the other places where the descendants 
of the refugee artizans had principally settled, fell into 
comparative decay. Many of the artisans, following 
the current of trade, left their looms in Spitalfields, 
and migrated to Coventry, Macclesfield, Manchester, 
and the other northern manufacturing towns, then 
rapidly rising in importance. The stronger and more 
self-reliant pushed out into the world ; the more qui- 
escent and feeble remained behind. The handloom 
trade could not be revived, and no amount of 



426 DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



patient toil and industry could avert the distress that 
fell upon the poor silk-weavers, which, even to this 
day, from time to time sends up its wail in the eastern 
parts of London.'"" 

Owing to these circumstances, as well as to the 
gradual intermingling of the foreign with the native 
population, the French element year by year became 
less marked in Spitalfiekls ; and in the course of a few 
generations the religious fervour which had distinguished 
the original Huguenot refugees entirely died out in 
their descendants. They might continue to frequent the 
French churches, but it was in constantly decreasing 
numbers. The foreign congregations which had been so 
flourishing about the beginning of the eighteenth century, 



* The Eev. Isaac Taylor, incum- 
bent of St. Matthias, Bethnal Green, 
in a letter to the Times of the 14th 
February last, thus describes the state 
of the district : — 

" This portion of Bethnal Green is 
the head-quarters of what is known 
as the Spitalfields silk-trade. The silk- 
weavers, by whom the parish of St. 
Matthias is mainly populated, are 
descendants of those Huguenot exiles 
who, for the cause of God and truth, 
and liberty and life, fled from the 
sunny plains of their native France 
in the years which succeeded the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew, and who 
were encouraged by Queen Elizabeth 
and her advisers to bring their valu- 
able industry to this country, and to 
settle on the lands adjacent to the 
Hospital of St. Mary — the Hospital 
or " Spital-fields, " as they were called, 
which were then just outside the walls 
of London. The descendants of these 



emigrants continue to inhabit the dis- 
trict. Many of them still cherish 
proud traditions of their ancestry ; 
many of them, though now perhaps 
only clad in rags, bear the old historic 
names of France — names of distin- 
guished generals and statesmen and 
poets and historians — names such as 
Vendome, Ney, Eacine, Defoe, La 
Fontaine, Dupin, Blois, Le Beau, 
Auvache, Fontaineau, and Montier. 
In addition to their surnames and 
their traditions, the only relic which 
these exiles retain of their former 
prosperity and gentle nurture, is a tra- 
ditional love of birds and flowers. 
Few rooms, however wretched, are 
destitute either of a sickly plant, 
struggling, like its sickly owner, for 
bare life ; or a caged bird warbling 
the songs of heaven to the poor im- 
prisoned weaver as he plies his weary 
labour." 



CHAP. XVII. 



THEIR HOME-LIFE. 



427 



towards the end of it became the mere shadows of what 
they had been, and at length many of them were closed 
altogether, or were turned over to other denominations. 

Sir Samuel Eomilly, in his Autobiography, gives a 
touching account of the domestic life of his father s 
family — their simple pleasures, their reading, society, 
and conversation. Nearly all the visitors and friends 
of the family were of French descent. They associated 
together, worshipped together, and intermarried among 
each other. The children went to a school kept by a 
refugee. On Sunday mornings, French was exclusively 
spoken in the family circle ; and at least once in the 
day the family pew in the French Artillery Church 
was regularly filled. " My father," says Sir Samuel, 
" had a pew in one of the French chapels, which had 
been established when the Protestant refugees first 
emigrated into England, and he required us to attend 
alternately there and at the parish church [this was 
about the year 1770]. It was a kind of homage which 
he paid to the faith of his ancestors, and it was a means 
of rendering the French language familiar to us ; but 
nothing was ever worse calculated to inspire the mind 
of a child with respect for religion than such a kind of 
religious worship. Most of the descendants of the 
refugees were born and bred in England, and desired 
nothing less than to preserve the memory of their 
origin, and the chapels were therefore ill-attended. A 
large uncouth room, the avenues to which were crowded 
courts and dirty alleys, and which, when you entered 
it, presented to the view only irregular unpainted pews 



428 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvit. 



and dusty unplastered walls ; a congregation consisting 
principally of some strange-looking old women, scattered 
here and there, two or three in a pew ; and a clergy- 
man reading the service and preaching in a monotonous 
tone of voice, and in a language not familiar to me, 
was not likely either to impress my mind with much 
religious awe, or to attract my attention to the doc- 
trines which were delivered. In truth, I did not once 
attempt to attend to them ; my mind was wandering 
to other subjects, and disporting itself in much gayer 
scenes than those before me, and little of religion was 
mixed in my reveries.""" 

Very few of the refugees returned to France. 
They long continued to sigh after the land of their 
fathers, hoping that the religious persecutions abroad 
would abate, so that they might return to live and 
die there. But the persecutions did not abate. They 
flared up again from time to time with increased fury, 
even after religion had become almost prostrate through- 
out France. Protestantism, though proscribed, was 
not, however, dead ; and meetings of the Huguenots 
continued to be held in " the Desert " — by night, in 
caves, in the woods, among the hills, by the sea-shore, 
where a body of faithful pastors ministered to them at 
the hourly peril of their lives. The " Church in the 
Desert" was even regularly organised, had its stated 
elders, deacons, and ministers, and appointed circuit 
meetings. Very rarely were their secrets betrayed, 
yet they could not always escape the vigilance of the 

* Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, i. 15. 



chap. xvii. THE LAST OF THE PERSECUTIONS. 



429 



Jesuits, who continued to track them with the aid of 
the soldiery and police, and succeeded in sending fresh 
victims to the galleys so long as they retained their 
power in France. 

Down even to the middle of last century, the 
persecution of the Protestants continued unabated. 
Thus, at Grenoble, in the years 1745 and 1746, more 
than three hundred persons were condemned to death, 
the galleys, or perpetual imprisonment, because of their 
religion. Twenty-nine nobles were condemned to 
be deprived of their nobility; fourteen persons were 
banished ; four were condemned to be flogged by the 
common hangman ; six women were sentenced to have 
their heads shaved by the same functionary, and be 
imprisoned, some for different periods, others for life ; 
two men were condemned to be placed in the pillory ; 
thirty-four were sent to the galleys for from three to 
five years, six for ten years, and a hundred and sixteen, 
amongst whom were forty-six gentlemen and two 
chevaliers of the order of Saint Louis, were sent to the 
galleys for life ; and four were sentenced to death* 
The only crime of which these persons had been guilty 
was, that they had been detected attending Protestant 
worship contrary to law. 

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1750, which gave 
a brief repose to Europe, brought no peace to the 
Huguenots. There was even an increase in the perse- 
cutions for a time ; for there was a large body of soldiery 
set at liberty, who became employed in hunting 

* Antoine Couet — Memoires Historiques, pp. 94 et seq. 



430 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



clown the Protestants at their meetings in " the Desert." 
Between the years 1750 and 1762, fifty-eight persons 
were condemned to the galleys, many of them for life. 
In the latter year, more than six hundred fugitives fled 
across the frontier into Switzerland, and passed down 
the Ehine, through Holland and England, into Ireland, 
where they settled. It is a somewhat remarkable cir- 
cumstance, that, according to M. Coquerel, one of the 
last women imprisoned for her religion, was condemned 
by an Irish Eoman Catholic, then in the service of 
France : — " Marguerite Eobert, wife of Joseph Vincent, 
of Valeirarques, in the diocese of Uzes, was arrested 
in her house because of having been married by a 
Protestant pastor; and condemned in 1759, by Mon- 
seigneur de Thomond . . . ce Lord Irlandois"* 

The punishment of the galleys was also draw- 
ing to an end. The mutterings of the coming revo- 
lution were already beginning to be heard. The long 
uncontrolled rule of the Jesuits had paved the way for 
Voltaire and Eousseau, whose influence was beginning to 
penetrate French society. In 1764, the Jesuits were 
suppressed by Parliament, and the persecutions in a 
great measure ceased. In 1769, Alexander Chambon, 
of Praules in the Viverais, the last galley-slave for the 
faith, was discharged from the convict-prison at Toulon, 
through the intervention of the Prince of Beauvau. 
Chambon was then eighty years old, and had passed 
twenty-seven years at the galleys, to which he had 
been condemned for attending a religious meeting. 

* Charles Coquerel — Histoire des Eglesis du Desert, ii. p. 428. 



chap. xvii. THE HUGUENOTS BECOME BRITISH. 431 



The last apprehension of a Protestant minister was 
that of M. Broca, of La Brie, as late as the year 1773 ; 
but the spirit of persecution had so much abated that 
he was only warned and required to change his resi- 
dence. It began to be felt that while materialism and 
atheism were being openly taught even by priests and 
dignitaries of the French church — by the Abbe de 
Prades and others— the persecution of the Protestants 
could no longer be consistently enforced ; and they ac- 
cordingly thenceforwards enjoyed a degree of liberty 
in the exercise of their worship such as they had not 
experienced since the death of Mazarin. 

But this liberty came too late to be of any use to 
the exiled Huguenots and their descendants settled in 
England, who had long since given up all hope of 
returning to the land of their fathers. The revolution- 
ary period shortly followed, after which came the wars 
of the republic, and the revival of the old feud between 
France and England. Many of the descendants of the 
exiles, no longer desiring to remember their origin, 
adopted English names, and ceased to be French. Since 
that time, the fusion of the exiles with the English 
people has become complete, even in Spitalfields. 
There are still whole quarters of streets there in 
which the glazed garrets indicate the dwellings of the 
former silk-weavers, but most of them are unoccupied. 
There are still some of their old mulberry-trees to be 
seen in the gardens near Spital Square. Many pure 
French names may still be observed over the shop- 
doors in that quarter of London ; and several descend- 



432 



DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES, chap. xvii. 



ants of the French manufacturers still continue to 
carry on the business of silk-weaving there. Even the 
pot-au-feu is still known in Spitalfields, though the 
poor people who use it know not of its origin. And 
although there are many descendants of the French 
operatives still resident in the east of London, probably 
by far the largest proportion of them have long since 
migrated to the more prosperous manufacturing dis- 
tricts of the north. 

Throughout the country, there was the same 
effacement of the traces of foreign origin among the 
descendants of the exiles. Everywhere they gradually 
ceased to be French.'" The foreign manners, customs, 
and language probably held out the longest at Portar- 
lington, in Ireland, where the old French of Louis 
Quartorze long continued to be spoken in society ; 
while the old French service was read in church down 
to the year 1817, when it was finally supplanted by 
the English. 

Thus, the refugees of all classes at length ceased 
to exist as a distinctive body among the people who 
had given them a refuge, and they were eventually ab- 
sorbed into and became an integral part of the British 
nation. 

* The French, mercantile houses in those of Bosanquet, Puget, etc. The 
England and Ireland, who did husi- house of Puget and Co. in St. Paul's 
ness in London, long continued to Churchyard, recently wound up, kept 
have their special London bankers, all their books in French down to the 
amongst whom may be mentioned beginning of the present century. 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 



CONCLUSION — THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

While such were the results of the settlement of 
the Protestant refugees in England, let us briefly glance 
at the effect of their banishment on the countries 
which drove them forth. 

The persecutions in Flanders and France doubtless 
succeeded after a sort. Philip II. crushed Protestant- 
ism in Flanders as he did in Spain, to the temporary 
ruin of the one country and the debasement of the other. 
Flanders eventually became lost to the Spanish crown, 
though it has since entered upon a new and prosper- 
ous career under the constitutional government of 
Belgium ; but Spain sank until she reached the very 
lowest rank among the nations of Europe. The In- 
quisition flourished, but the life of the nation decayed. 
Spain lost her commerce, her colonies, her credit, her 
intellect, her character. She became a country of 
emeutes, revolutions, pronunciamentos, repudiations, 
and intrigues. We have only to look at Spain now. 
If it be true that in the long run the collective character 
of a nation is fairly represented by its government and 
its rulers, the character of Spain must have fallen 
very low indeed. 

And how fared it with France after the banishment 
2 F 



434 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. CHAr. xvm 



of lier Huguenots ? So far as regarded the suppression 
of Protestantism, Louis XIV. may also be said to 
have succeeded. For more than a century, that form 
of religion visibly ceased to exist in France. The 
Protestants had neither rights nor privileges, and not 
even a vestige of liberty, for they were placed entirely 
beyond the pale of the law. Such of them as would 
not be dragooned into conformity to the Eoman Catho- 
lic religion, were cast into prison or sent to the galleys. 
If the Protestants were not stamped wholly out of ex- 
istence, at least they were stamped out of sight ; and 
if they continued to worship, it was in secret only — 
in caves, among the hills, or in " the Desert." Indeed, 
no measure of suppression could have been more com- 
plete. But now see with what results. 

One thing especially strikes the intelligent reader 
of French history subsequent to the Act of Eevocation, 
— and that is, the almost total disappearance of great 
men in France. After that date, we become conscious 
of a dull, dead level of subserviency and conformity 
to the despotic will of the king.'" Louis trampled 
under foot individuality, strength, and genius; and 
there remained only mediocrity, feebleness, and flunkey- 
ism. This feature of the time has been noted by writers 

* In the reign of Louis XI V. a sonnet was privately circulated, from which 
the following is an extract : — 

Ce peuple que jadis Dieu gouvernait lui-meme 
Trop las de son bonheur, voulait avoir un Roi, 
He bien, dit le Seigneur, peuple ingrat et sans foi, 
Tu sentiras bientot le poids du diademe. 

* * * * , 

Ainsi regne aujourd'hui par les voeux de la France 
Ce Monarque absolu qu'on nomme Dieu-donne. 



CHAP. XVIII. 



BOOK-BURNING. 



435 



so various as De Felice, Merivale, Michelet, and Buckle 
— the last of whom goes so far as to say that Louis XIV. 
"survived the entire intellect of the French nation."''' 5 ' 
The Protestant universities of Saumur, Montauban, 
Msnies, and Sedan were suppressed, and the professors 
in them departed into other lands. All Protestant 
schools were closed, and the whole educational organ- 
isation of the nation was placed in the hands of the 
Jesuits. War was declared against the books forbidden 
by the Church of Eome. Domiciliary visits were paid 
by the district commanders to every person suspected 
of possessing them; and all devotional books of ser- 
mons and hymns as well as Bibles and Testaments 
that could be found, were ruthlessly burned. f 



* M. Puaux, referring to the mea- 
sures so servilely passed by the French 
Parliament legalising and aggrandis- 
ing the illegitimate offspring of Louis 
XIV., and declaring them princes of 
the blood capable of succeeding to 
the throne, goes on to say — -"At 
sight of these councillors of the red 
robe, who trembled before the old 
Sultan of Versailles in sanctioning 
the glaring scandals of his life, one is 
justified in asking whether Frenchmen 
continued to retain the courage dis- 
played by them on so many a field of 
battle, and whether the cruel saying 
of Paul -Louis Courier be not true : 
'Frenchmen, you are the mostflunkey- 
ish of all peoples ! ' (Francais, vous 
etes le plus valet de tous le peuplcs). 
We blush as we write the lines, at the 
same time avowing our belief, which 
we do with pride, that the Great 
King would never have obtained from 



a Huguenot court what was so ser- 
vilely granted him by a Catholic 
one." — Ptjaux — Histoire de la Refor- 
mation Francaise, torn. vii. p. 64. 

t Louis XV, who succeeded to 
Louis XIV, pursued the same policy 
of book-buming. On the 25th of 
April 1727 he issued an edict ordering 
all "new converts" [i.e. Protestants 
who had been compelled to conform, 
or pretended to conform, to Popery] 
to deliver up all books relating to 
religion within fifteen days, for the 
purpose of being burnt in presence of 
the commandants of the respective 
districts. Those who did not so de- 
liver up their books were heavily 
fined ; and if found guilty a second 
time of withholding their books, they 
were to be sentenced to three years' 
banishment and a fine amounting to 
not less than one-third the value of their 
entire property. This measure com- 



436 



THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. chap, xviii. 



There was an end for a time of political and reli- 
gious liberty in France. Freedom of thought and free- 
dom of worship were alike crushed ; and then the new 
epoch began — of mental stagnation, political depravity, 
religious hypocrisy, and moral decay. With the great 
men of the first half of Louis XIV/s reign, the intel- 
lectual greatness of France disappeared for nearly a 
century. The Act of Eevocation of 1685 cut the 
history of his reign in two : everything before, nothing 
after. There was no great statesman after Colbert. 
At his death in 1683, the policy which he had so 
laboriously and so grandly initiated was summarily 
overthrown. The military and naval genius of France 
seemed alike paralysed. The great victories of Conde 
and Turenne on land, and of Duquesne at sea, pre- 
ceded the Eevocation. After that, Louis' army was 
employed for years in hunting and dragonnading the 
Huguenots, which completely demoralised them ; so 
that his next campaign, that of 1688, began in 
disaster and ended in disgrace. 

The same barrenness fell upon literature. Moliere, 
the greatest of French comedians, died of melancholy 



pleted the destruction of the Protestant 
libraries. The dragoons were the 
Omars of the time, and ruthlessly 
carried out the royal edict for the 
destruction of Protestant literature. 
In most of the towns and villages 
throughout France, great bonfires 
were lit, into which were cast thou- 
sands of volumes, including Bibles 
and Testaments. Hence the great 
rarity of some of the earlier editions 



of the Scriptures, which are now only 
to be met with out of France. The 
most considerable auto-da-fe, of this 
kind took place at Beaucaire, where 
many thousand volumes of rare and 
valuable books were consumed on a 
great pile lit in front of the Hotel 
de Ville, in the presence of the muni- 
cipal authorities, and of M. de 
Beaulieu, sub-delegate of the intendant 
of Languedoc. 



CHAP. XVIII. 



NA TIONAL PARAL 1 T SIS. 



437 



in 1674. Racine, the greatest of French poets and 
dramatists, died in 1697. but his genius maybe said 
to have culminated with the production of Phwdre in 
1676. Corneille died in 1 6 S 4 , but his last, though not 
his greatest work, Surena, was produced in 1674. La 
Fontaine published his last fables in 1679. 

With Pascal, a man as remarkable for his piety as 
for his genius, expired in 1662 the last free utterance 
of the Eoman Catholic Church in France. He died 
protesting to the last against the immorality and des- 
potism of the principles of the Jesuits. It is true, 
after the Revocation, there remained of the great French 
clergy, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon. They were, 
however, the products of the first half of Louis' reign, 
and they were the last of their race. For we shall 
find that the effect of the king's policy Was to strike 
with paralysis the very church which he sought exclu- 
sively to establish and maintain. 

After this period, we seem to tread a dreary waste 
in French history. True loyalty became extinguished, 
and even patriotism seemed to have expired. Literature, 
science, and the arts, almost died out, and there re- 
mained a silence almost as of the grave, broken only 
by the noise of the revelries at court, amidst which 
there rose up from time to time the ominous waitings 
of the o-aunt and famishing: multitude. 

The policy of Louis XIY. had succeeded, and 
France was at length ''"converted." Protestantism had 
been crushed, and the Jesuits were triumphant. Their 
power over the bodies and souls of the people was as 



438 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. chap, xviii. 



absolute as law could make it. The whole education 
of the country was placed in their hands ; and what 
the character of the next generation was to be, de- 
pended in a great measure upon them. Not only 
the churches and the schools, but even the national 
prisons, were controlled by them. They were the 
confessors of the bastiles, of which there were twenty 
in France, where persons could be incarcerated for life 
on the authority merely of lettres cle cachet, which 
were given away or sold." Besides the bastiles and 
the galleys, t over which the Jesuits presided, there 
w^ere also the state prisons, of which Paris alone 
contained about thirty, besides convents, where persons 
might be immured without any sentence. " Surely 
never," says Michelet, " had man's dearest treasure, 
liberty, been more lavishly squandered." 

The church in France had grown immensely rich by 
the property of the Protestants which was transferred 
to it, as well as by royal grants and private benefac- 
tions. So far as money went, it had the means and 
the power of doing all that it would in moulding 
the mind and conscience of the French nation. The 
clergy held in their hands one-fifth of the whole landed 

* Saint Floren tin alone gave away Well-Beloved, " the galleys still con- 
no fewer than 50,000. Many of the tained many Protestants, besides 
persons immured in these horrible persons who had been detected aiding 
places were forgotten, or if they sue- Protestants to escape. They were 
ceeded in obtaining their release, they regarded as veritable slaves, and were 
sometimes issued from their dungeons occasionally sold, the price of a 
with their ears and noses gnawed away galley-slave in The Well-Beloved's 
by rats. reign being about £120. Voltaire 

was presented with a galley-slave by 

+ In the reign of Louis XV. "The M. de Choiseul. 



CHAP. XVIII. 



REIGN OF INFIDELITY. 



439 



property of the country, estimated to he worth about 
£'160,000,000; and attached to these lands were the 
serfs whom they continued to hold as such until the 
Bevolution.* 

And now, let us see what was the outcome of the 
action of this church, so rich and so powerful, after 
enjoying a century of undisputed authority in France. 
All other faiths had been expelled to make way for 
it; Protestantism had been exterminated, and free 
thouoht of all kinds had shrunk for a time out of 
sight. 

What was the result of this exclusive action upon 
the mind and conscience of the French people ? The 
result was utter emptiness : — to use the words of 
Carlyle, " emptiness of pocket, of stomach, of head, 
and of heart," The church which had claimed and 
obtained the sole control of the religious education of 
France saw itself assailed by its own offspring, — 
desperate, ignorant, and so ferocious, that in some places 
they even seized the priests and indecently scourged 
them in front of then own altars. t 

The nation that would not have the Bayles, and 
Claudes, and Saurins of a century before, now cast 
themselves at the feet of the Voltaires, Eousseaus, and 
Diderots. Though France would not have the God 

* The clergy still possessed serfs had still his serfs. . . . Bondage 

in the time of the Revolution. The "was not expressly abolished till March 

whole of the eighteenth century had 1790. — Michelet — History of the 

passed away, together with all the French Revolution. 
liberators, both Rousseau and Voltaire, 

whose last thought was the enfran- + Caeltle — French Revolution, ii. 

chisenient of the Jura. Yet the priest p. 2. 



440 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. chap, xviii. 



of the Huguenot's Bible, behold now she accepts the 
evangel according to Jean Jacques, and a poor bedizened 
creature, clad in tawdry, is led through the streets of 
Paris in the character of the Goddess of Eeason ! 

But a large number of the clergy of the Eoman 
Catholic Church in France had themselves long ceased 
to believe in the truth of what they professed to teach. 
They had grown utterly corrupted and demoralised. 
Their monasteries were the abodes of idleness and self- 
indulgence. Their pulpits were mute : their books 
were empty. The doctors of the Sorbonne still mumbled 
their accustomed jargon, but it had become powerless. 
Instead of the great churchmen of the past — Bossuet, 
Bourdaloue, and Fenelon, — there were such blind 
leaders of the blind as the Cardinal de Eohan, the 
profligate confederate of Madame la Motte in the affair 
of the diamond necklace ; the Abbe Sieyes, the consti- 
tution-monger ; the Abbe Eaynal, the open assailant of 
Christianity in every form ; and Father Lomenie, the 
avowed atheist."''' 



* At the Revolution, many of the 
priests openly abjured Christianity, 
and were applauded accordingly. The 
Bisliop of Perigaux presented the 
woman whom he had married to the 
Convention, saying, ' ' I have taken 
her from amongst the sans cullottes." 
His speech was hailed with immense 
applause. Gobel, Archbishop of Pa- 
ris, presented himself at the bar of 
the Convention, with his vicars and 
many of his curates, and desired to 
lay at the feet of the Assembly their 
sacerdotal garments. " Citizens," 
said the President in reply, " you are 



worthy of the Republic, because you 
have sacrificed at the altar of your 
country these Gothic baubles." Go- 
bel and his priests then donned the 
bonnet rouge in token of fraternisation 
with the ' ' Friends of Men. ' ' Numbers 
of priests came daily and gave up to 
the Convention their letters of priest- 
hood. Puaux says, "Those of their 
predecessors who distinguished them- 
selves in the crusades against the 
Huguenots, had slipped their foot in 
blood ; but these fell lower — their 
foot slijyped in mud." 



CHAP. XVIII. 



FLIGHT OF THE CLERGY. 



441 



The corrupt, self-condemned institution, became a 
target for the wit of Voltaire and the encyclopaedic phi- 
losophy of Diderot. It was next assailed by the clubs 
of Marat, Danton, and Eobespierre. Then the unfed, 
untaught, desperate victims of centuries of oppression 
and misguidance rose up almost as one man, and cried 
"Away with it" — Ecrasez VInfame. The churches 
were attacked and gutted, as those of the Huguenots 
had been a century before. The church-bells were 
cast into cannon, the church-plate coined into money ; 
and at length Christianity itself was abolished by the 
Convention, who declared the Supreme People to be 
the only God ! 

The Eoman Catholic clergy, who had so long wit- 
nessed the persecutions of the Huguenots, were now 
persecuted in their turn by their own flocks. Many of 
them were guillotined ; others, chained together as the 
Huguenots had been, were sent prisoners to Eochelle 
and the Isle of Aix. As a body of them passed through 
Limoges, on their way to the galleys, they encountered 
a procession of asses clothed in priests' dresses, a mitred 
sow marching at their head. Some 400 priests lay 
riding in Aix roads, where the Huguenot galley-slaves 
had been before them — " ragged, sordid, hungry, wasted 
to shadows, eating their unclean rations on deck, circu- 
larly, in parties of a dozen, with finger and thumb ; 
beating their scandalous clothes between two stones ; 
choked in horrible miasmata, under close hatches, 
seventy of them in a berth through the night, so that the 



442 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. chap, xviii. 



aged priest is found lying dead in the morning in an 
attitude of prayer."* 

Such, was the real outcome of the Act of Eevoca- 
tion of Louis the Great — Sanscullotism and the Eeign of 
Terror ! There was no longer the massacre and banish- 
ment of Huguenots, but there was the guillotining 
and banishment of the successors of the priests whom 
Louis had set up. There was one other point in which 
1793 resembled 1685. The fugitive priests fled in pre- 
cisely the same direction in which the Huguenot pas- 
tors had done ; and again the persecuted for religion s 
sake made for the old free land of England, to join the 
descendants of the Huguenots, driven out of France for 
altogether different reasons a century before. 

But the Eoman Catholic priests did not fly alone. 
They were accompanied by the nobles, the superin- 
tendents of the dragonnades. Never, since the flight 
of Huguenots which followed the Eevocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, had there been such an emigration of 
Frenchmen from France. But there was this difference 
between the emigrations of 1 685 and 1 793, that whereas 
in the former period the people who emigrated con- 
sisted almost entirely of the industrious classes, in the 
latter period they consisted almost entirely of the idle 
classes. The men who now fled were the nobles and 
priests, who had so misguided and mistaught the people 
entrusted to their charge, that in nearly all parts of 
France they had at length risen up in fierce rebellion 
against them. 

* Cap,,lyle — French Revolution, ii. 338. 



chap, xviii. STARVATION OF THE PEOPLE. 



443 



The great body of the people had become reduced 
to absolute destitution. They had no possession what- 
ever but their misery. They were literally dying of 
hunger. The Bishop of Chartres told Louis XV. that 
in liis diocese the men browsed like sheep. For want 
of food, they filled their stomachs with grass. The 
dragoons, who had before been employed to hunt down 
the Huguenots because of their attending religious 
meetings, were now employed on a different duty. 
They were stationed in the market-places where meal 
was exposed for sale, to keep back the famishing 
people. In Paris alone there were 200,000 beggars 
prowling about, with sallow faces, lank hair, and hung 
in rags. In 1789, crowds of them were seen hovering 
about the Palais Eoyal — spectral-looking men and 
starving women, delirious from fasting. Some were 
said not to have eaten for three whole days. The 
women wandered about like hungry lionesses, for they 
had children. One Foulon, a member of the kings 
council, on being told of the famine endured by the 
people, said — " Wait till I am minister : I will make 
them eat hay ; my horses eat it." The words were 
bitterly avenged. The hungry mob seized Foulon, 
hanged him a la lanterne, and carried his head about 
the streets, his mouth filled with hay. 

From the provinces, news came that the starving 
helots were everywhere rising, burning down the 
chateaus of the nobles, tearing up their title-deeds, 
and destroying their crops. On these occasions, the 
church-bells were rung by way of tocsin, and the 



444 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. chap, xviii. 



population of the parish turned out to the work of 
destruction. Seventy-two chateaus ware wrecked and 
burnt in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone; and the 
conflagration spread throughout Dauphiny, Alsace, and 
the Lyonnais — the very quarters from which the 
Huguenots had been so ferociously driven out a cen- 
tury before. 

There was scarcely a district in which the Huguenots 
had pursued their various branches of industry, now 
wholly suppressed, in which the starving and infuriated 
peasantry did not work wild havoc, and take revenge 
upon their lords. They had learned but too well the 
lessons of the sword, the dungeon, and the scaffold, 
which their rulers had taught them ; and the Eeign of 
Terror which followed was but the natural outcome of 
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the wars of the 
dragonnades, the cruelties which followed the Act of 
Eevocation, and a long course of like teaching. But 
the victims had now changed places. Now it was the 
nobles who were persecuted, burnt out, had their 
estates confiscated, and were compelled to fly for their 
lives. 

The dragonnades of the Huguenots became 
repeated in the noyades of the Boyalists ; and again 
Nancy, Lyons, Eouen, Bordeaux, Montauban, and 
numerous other places, witnessed a repetition of the 
cruelties of the preceding century. At Nantes, where 
the famous Edict of Toleration, afterwards revoked, was 
proclaimed, the guillotine was worked until the heads- 
man sank exhausted ; and to hasten matters, a general 



CHAP. XVIII. 



REIGN OF TERROR. 



445 



fusillade in the plain of St. Mauve followed, of men, 
women, and children. At Paris, the hideous Marat 
called for " eight hundred gibbets," in convenient rows, 
to hang the enemies of the people. He would be 
satisfied with nothing short of " two hundred thousand 
aristocratic heads." 

It is unnecessary to pursue the dreadful story 
further. Suffice it to say that the nobles, like the 
priests, fled out of France to escape the fury of the 
people, and they too made for England, where they 
received the same asylum which had been extended to 
their clergy, and before them to the Huguenots. To 
prevent the flight of the noblesse, the same measures 
were adopted by the Convention which Louis XIV. 
adopted to prevent the escape of the Huguenots. The 
frontiers were strictly guarded, and all the roads 
patrolled which led out of France. Severe laws were 
passed against emigration ; and the estates of fugitive 
aristocrats were declared to be confiscated to the state. 
Nevertheless, many succeeded in making their escape 
into Switzerland, Germany, and England. 

It fared still worse with Louis XVI. and his beau- 
tiful queen Marie Antoinette. They were the most 
illustrious victims of the barbarous policy of Louis 
X1Y. That monarch had sowed the wind, and they 
now reaped the whirlwind. A mob of starving men 
and women, the genuine offspring of the Great King, 
burst in upon Louis and his consort at Versailles, 
shouting "Bread! bread!" They were very different 
from the plumed and garlanded courtiers accustomed 



446 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. chap, xviii. 



to worship in these gilded saloons, and by no means so 
obsequious. They insisted on the king and queen ac- 
companying them to Paris, virtually their prisoners. 
The royal family tried to escape, as the Huguenots had 
done before them, across the frontier into Germany. But 
in vain. The king's own highway was closed against 
him ; and the fugitives were led back to Paris and the 
guillotine. 

The last act of the unfortunate Louis was his 
attempt to address a few words to his subjects, when 
the drums were ordered to be beaten, and his voice 
was drowned by the noise. It was remembered that 
the last occasion on which a like scene had occurred 
in France, was on the occasion of the execution of the 
young Huguenot pastor Fulcran Eey at Beaucaire. 
When he opened his mouth publicly to confess his 
faith, the drummers posted round the scaffold were 
ordered to beat, and his dying speech remained un- 
heard. The slaughter of the martyred preacher was 
thus terribly avenged. 

We think we are justified in saying, that but for 
the persecution and expulsion of the Huguenots at the 
Be vocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Be- 
volution of 1789 most probably never would have 
occurred. The Protestants supplied that enterprising 
and industrious middle class which gives stability to 
every state. They provided remunerative employment 
for the population, while at the same time they enriched 
the kingdom by their enterprise and industry. More- 
over, they furnished that virtuous and religious element 



chap, xviii. THE TWO EMIGRA TIONS. 



447 



in society without which a nation is but as so much 
chaff that is driven before the wind. When they were 
suppressed or banished, there was an end of their 
industrial undertakings. The further growth of a 
prosperous middle class was prevented ; and the mis- 
government of the ruling class being unchecked, the 
great body of the working order were left to idleness, 
nakedness, and famine. Faith in God and in good 
died out ; religion, as represented by the degenerate 
priesthood, fell into contempt ; and the reign of mate- 
rialism and atheism began. Frightful distress at length 
culminated in revolution and anarchy ; and there 
being no element of stability in the state, — no class 
possessing moral weight to stand between the in- 
furiated people at the one end of the social scale, 
and the king and nobles on the other, — the im- 
posture erected by the Great Louis was assailed on 
all sides, and king, church, and nobility were at once 
swept away. 

As regards the emigration of the Huguenots in 
1685, and of the nobles and clergy in 1789, it must 
be acknowledged that the former was by much the 
most calamitous to France. " Was the one emigration 
greater than the other?" says Michelet. "I do not 
know. That of 1685 was probably from three to four 
hundred thousand persons. However this may be, 
there was this great difference between them : France, 
at the emigration of '89, lost its idlers ; at the other its 
workers. The terror of '89 struck the individual, and 
each feared for his life. The terror of the dragon- 



448 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. chap. xvnr. 



nades struck at heart and conscience ; then men feared 
for their all." 

The one emigration consisted for the most part of 
nobles and clergy, who left no traces of their settle- 
ment in the countries which gave them asylum ; the 
other emigration comprised all the constituent elements 
of a people — skilled workmen in all branches, manufac- 
turers, merchants, and professional men ; and wherever 
they settled they founded numerous useful establish- 
ments which were a source of prosperity and wealth. 

Assuredly England has no reason to regret the 
asylum which she has in all times so freely granted to 
fugitives flying from religious persecution abroad. Least 
of all has she reason to regret the settlement within 
her borders of so large a number of industrious, in- 
telligent, and high-minded Frenchmen, who have made 
this country their home since the Eevocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, and thereby not only stimulated, and 
in a measure created, British industry; but also in- 
fluenced, in a remarkable degree, our political and 
religious history. 



APPENDIX. 



2 G 



APPENDIX. 



I. EARLY SETTLEMENT OF FOREIGN ARTIZANS 
IN ENGLAND. 

The first extensive immigration of foreign artizans of which we hare any 
account took place in the reign of Henry II. It was occasioned by an inun- 
dation in the Low Countries which dispossessed many of the inhabitants, when 
large numbers of them came over into England. They were well received by 
the king, who forwarded a body of them to Carlisle, for the purpose of plant- 
ing them on the then unsettled and almost desert lands adjacent to the Scotch 
border. But the lawless state of the district was fatal to the quiet pursuits of 
the Flemings, and Henry subsequently directed their removal to the peninsula 
of Gower in South Wales. There the Flemings began and successfully carried 
on their trade of cloth -weaving. They formed a community by themselves, 
and jealously preserved their nationality. The district long continued to be 
known as " Little England beyond Wales ;" and to this day the community 
of Gower is to a great extent distinct and separate from that of the surround- 
ing country. 

Another colony of Flemings settled about the same time at "Worsted near 
Norwich, and " worsted" stuffs soon became common. These colonists were 
the first to introduce into England water-driven corn-mills, wind-mills, and 
fulling-mills. They also re-introduced the art of building in brick, which had 
not been practised in England since the time of the Romans. Traces of their 
early brick -work are still observable in several of the old churches at Norwich 
and Worsted, — Worsted church furnishing an unmistakeable specimen of early 
Flemish architecture. Other colonies of Flemish fishermen settled at Brighton, 
Newhaven, and other places along the south coast, where their lineage is still 
traceable in local words, names, and places.* 

Other Flemings established themselves still further north, f At Berwick - 



* "Strombolo" or " stromballen " (stream- 
balls) is the pure Flemish name given here 
to pieces of black bitumen, charged with 
sulphur and salt, found along the coast. It 
is one of the many indications of an early- 
Flemish colony of fishers. — Murray's Sussex. 

t A -writer in the Edinburgh Eevievj (July 
1S63) says—" During the twelfth and thir- 
teenth centuries Flemish colonies have been 



traced in Berwick, St. Andrews, Perth, 
Dumbarton, Ayr, Peebles, Lanark, Edin- 
burgh, and in the districts of Renfrewshire, 
Clydesdale, and Annandale. These strangers 
lived under the protection of a special code 
of mercantile law ; and recent investigations 
have established the fact that, a hundred 
years before the great Baltic Association 
came into being, we had a Hanseatic League 



452 



EARL Y FOREIGN ARTIZANS. 



APPENDIX. 



upon-Tweed they occupied a large factory called the Red Hall, situated in the 
main street of the town. The principal business carried on by them there was 
the export of wool, wool-fells, and hides, and the import of iron, weapons, 
implements, and merchandise of various kinds. These Flemish traders were 
under the special protection of the Scotch king, to whom they rendered loyal 
service in return ; for history relates that on the storming of Berwick by 
Edward I. in 1296, the Flemings barricaded themselves in the Red Hall, and 
defended themselves with such courage and obstinacy that, rather than sur- 
render, they were buried to a man in the ruins. 

A new impulse was given to the immigration of Flemish artizans into 
England by the protracted intestine feuds arising out of the dynastic quarrels 
of the Burgundian princes, which unsettled industry and kept the Low Coun- 
tries in a state of constant turmoil. But perhaps a still more potent cause of 
Flemish emigration was the severity of the regulations enforced by the guilds 
or trades unions of Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, Liege, and the other great 
towns, which became so many centres of commercial monopoly. The rich 
guilds combined to crush the poorer ones, and the privileged to root out the 
unprivileged. Such artizans as would not submit to their exactions were 
liable to have their looms broken and their dwellings gutted, and to be them- 
selves expelled with their families beyond the walls. If they took shelter in 
the neighbouring villages, and began to exercise their calling there, they were 
occasionally pursued by the armed men of the guilds, who burned down the 
places which had given them refuge, and drove them forth into the wide 
Avorld with no other possession than their misery.* 

These persecuted artizans, who had earned their living for the most part 
by working up English wool into Flemish cloth, naturally turned their eyes 
in the direction of England, and all who could find the means of emigrating 
made haste to fly, and place the sea between them and the tyranny of the 
trades unions. 

Although the early English kings had been accustomed to encourage the 
immigration of foreign artizans, it was not until the reign of Edward III. 
usually styled "the father of English commerce," that any decided progress 
was made by this country in manufacturing industry. That sagacious monarch 
held that, as regarded the necessaries of life, clothing as well as food, the 
people of his kingdom should be as much as possible independent of foreign 
supply. In the early part of his reign the English people relied mainly upon 
the Flemish manufacturers for the better sorts of clothing, wdiile the English 
wool-growers looked to the Flemish wool-markets as the chief outlet for their 
produce. So long as peaceful relations existed between the two countries, the 
exchange of the raw produce for the manufactured articles went on, to the 
benefit of both. But when these were interrupted by civic broils in Flanders, 
by feuds amongst the guilds, or by war between the two countries, serious incon- 
veniences were immediately felt. The English producer lost a market for his 



in Scotland, small and unimportant com- 
paratively, but known by that very name. 
This was in the time of David I., towards the 
middle of the twelfth century." 



* See Altmeyer's curious pamphlet illus- 
trative of this subject, entitled Notices His- 
toriques sur la Ville de Poperinghen, Ghent 
1840. 



appendix. THE FLEMISH CLOTH WE A VERS. 



453 



staple at the same time that the English consumer was deprived of the supply 
of clothing on which he had been accustomed to rely. 

The question naturally occurred to the English king, Why not establish 
markets for the staple at home, and work up the wool into cloth by the hands 
of our own people ? This appeared to him both reasonable and desirable ; and 
to accomplish both objects, Edward proceeded to invite Flemish artizans to 
come over in increased numbers and settle in England, with the view of teaching 
the English work-people the arts of spinning, dyeing, and weaving the best 
kinds of cloth. He accordingly sent abroad agents to induce them to come 
over to this countiy, promising them protection, and holding out liberal offers 
to such as should embrace his invitation. 

Fuller, in his Church History, gives the following curious account of the 
means resorted to by Edward : — " Englishmen," he says, " at this time knew 
no more what to do with the wool than the sheep that wear it, as to any arti- 
ficial and curious drapery, — their best cloths being no better than friezes, 
such was their coarseness from want of skill in the making. Unsuspected 
emissaries were employed by our king in those countries, who wrought them- 
selves into familiarity with such Dutchmen as were absolute masters of their 
trade, but not masters of themselves, as journeymen and apprentices. They 
bemoaned the slavishness of these poor servants, whom their masters used 
rather like heathens than Christians ; yea, rather like horses than men ; early 
up, and late in bed, and all day hard work, and harder fare, as a few herrings 
and mouldy cheese, and all to enrich the churls their masters, with profit to 
themselves. But, ! how happy should they be, if they would but come 
into England, bringing their mystery with them, which would provide them 
welcome in all places. Here they should feed on fat beef and mutton till 
nothing but their fulness should stint their stomachs. Yea, they should feed 
on the labours of their own hands, enjoying a proportionable profit of their 
gains to themselves ; their beds should be good, and their bedfellows better, 
seeing the richest yeomen in England would not disdain to marry their daugh- 
ters unto them, and such the English beauties that the most envious foreigner 
could not but commend them." 

The representations made by Edward's agents were not without their effect 
in inducing many of the distressed Flemings to come over and settle in various 
parts of England. But another circumstance materially contributed to hasten 
the exodus of the foreign artizans. This was the sudden outbreak of war 
between England and France in 1336. Philip de Valois, the French king, 
artfully stirred up Louis de Severs, Count of Flanders, to strike a blow against 
England in his behalf ; and an order was issued by him for the arrest of all 
the English then in the Low Countries. The order was executed ; but it was 
speedily felt that the blow had been struck at Flanders rather than at 
England. 

Edward, on his part, was not slow to retaliate. He prohibited the export 
of English wool as well as the import of Flemish cloth. The Flemings thus 
found themselves at the same moment deprived of their indispensable supply 
of raw material, and shut out from one of the principal markets for the sale 
of their goods. At the same time Edward took the opportunity of reiterating, 
which he did with increased effect, his invitation to the Flemish artizans to 



454 



EARL Y FOREIGN ARTIZANS. appendix. 



come over to England, where they would be amply supplied with wool, and 
provided with ready markets for all the cloth they could manufacture. He 
granted a charter for the express purpose of protecting such foreign mer- 
chants and artizans as might settle in England, guaranteeing them security in 
the pursuit of their industry, freedom to trade within the realm, exemption 
from certain duties, good and prompt justice, good weight, and good measure.* 
These measures proved successful in a remarkable degree. Large numbers of 
Flemings forthwith migrated into England, bringing with them their tools, 
their skill, and their industry. The French king tried, when too late, to stop 
the emigration ; but he found it impossible to arrest the flight of the artizans 
through the ports of Flanders into the dominions of his enemy. 

The great migrations of Flemings into England in the reign of Edward III. 
may be said, in some measure, to have laid the foundations of English manu- 
facturing industry. The Dutch statesman De Witt, referring to it as matter 
of history, observed, that before the removal of the cloth-trade to England, 
the Netherlander could deal well enough with the English, ' ' they being only 
shepherds and wool -merchants. " + Michelet also, reviewing the same events, 
says — " Before England was the great manufactory of ironware and woollens 
for the world, she was a manufactory of wool and meat. From time imme- 
morial her people had been a cattle-breeding, sheep-rearing race. ... I 
take it that the English character has been seriously modified by these emigra- 
tions, which went on during the whole of the fourteenth century. Previously 
we find no indications of that patient industry which now distinguishes the 
English. By endeavouring to separate Flanders and England, the French 
king only stimulated Flemish emigration, and laid the foundation of England's 
manufactures." % 

The Flemish cloth-workers, as they came over, had special districts assigned 
to them, with special liberties and privileges. They were planted all over 
England, — in London, in Kent, in Somerset, in Norfolk, in Nottingham- 
shire, in Yorkshire, in Lancashire, and as far north as Kendal in Westmore- 
land. 

Seventy Walloon families from Brabant were settled in the ward of Candle- 
wick, London, and two meeting-places were assigned to them — one in Lau- 
rence Pountney churchyard, the other in the churchyard of St. Mary, Somerset. 
Stow says they were weavers of drapery, tapery, and napery — in other words, 
of woollen and linen stuffs. Guilds were established in connection with the 
new branches of trade ; and, with a view to their encouragement, the king 
himself joined them as a guild brother. 

The name of the leader of one of the earliest bands of Flemish emigrants 
has been handed down to us — that of John Kempe, a Flemish woollen- 
weaver, to whom royal letters of protection were granted in 1330, to exer- 
cise his art, and " to teach it to such of our people as shall be inclined 
to learn it." The like protection was extended to his men, servants, and 
apprentices, and to all his goods and chattels whatsoever. Kempe eventually 
settled at Kendal, and there began the manufacture of cloths, which con- 



* Rymer — Fosdera, ii. 747. i Michelet— History of France, book vi. 

t De Witt — The True Interest of Holland. ch. i. 



APPENDIX. 



THE BROTHERS BLANKET. 



455 



tinues to this day ; the descendants of Kempe being still traceable in Kendal 
and the neighbourhood.* 

Six years after Kempe came over, Edward granted similar protection to 
two Brabant weavers, who settled at York, and carried on their trade there. 
They are described in the royal letter as " Willielmus de Brabant et Han- 
cheinus de Brabant, textores," after the latter of whom the hank or skein of 
worsted is said to have been called. 

The woollen-cloth trade seems early to have become established at Notting- 
ham, and gave rise in the town and county to many considerable families, 
some of whose names indicate a Flemish origin. Thus there were the Bugges 
and Willoughbys, joint ancestors of the house of Willoughby (Lord Middle- 
ton), at Wollaton, near Nottingham ; the Mappurleys, Thurlands, Amyases, 
Plumtres, Tamesleys, Binghams, and Hunts. + 

Other Flemings planted themselves in the west of England, and in course 
of time their fulling-mills were busily at work along the streams of "Wiltshire, 
Somerset, and South Gloucester, where the manufacture of cloth still continues 
to flourish. J Bath and Bristol also shared in the prosperity which followed 
the introduction of this new branch of trade. At the latter place, three 
brothers of the name of Blanket, taking advantage of the immigration of the 
foreign artizans, set up looms in their houses for the weaving of cloth. The 
magistrates, on hearing of their proceedings, tried to stop them by heavy 
fines, on which the brothers Blanket appealed to the king. Edward im 
mediately wrote to the corporation, that, " considering the manufactures may 
turn out to the great advantage of us and all the people of our kingdom, 
you are to permit the machines to be erected in their [the Flemings'] houses, 
without making on that account any reproach, hindrance, or undue exaction." 
This royal order had the effect of checking the oppressive interference of the 
corporation. The brothers Blanket were accordingly enabled to proceed with 
their operations ; and blankets § soon became an important branch of Bristol 
manufacture. 

Before the time of Edward III. the common people had been accustomed 
to wear coarse clothes made of hemp ; but on the introduction of blankets 
they came into general use for purposes of clothing. The blankets were 



* Nicholson — Annals of Kendal, 2d edition, 
p. 235. 

f Mi\ Felkin of Nottingham informs us 
that the woollen-cloth manufacture nourished 
in the town before the time of King John. 
That monarch stayed in the place several 
times, in a building called King John's 
Palace, lately taken down. He granted a 
charter to Nottingham, in which persons 
within ten miles of it were forbidden to work 
woollen cloth except it was dyed in the 
borough. 

% At a later date (20th Henry VII.) Anthony 
Bonvis, an Italian, introduced the art of 
spinning with the distaff in Devonshire, and 
began the making of Devonshire kerseys and 
coxal cloths. Before his time only friezes 



and plain coarse cloths were made in that 
county. 

§ It has been supposed by some that the 
brothers Blanket gave its distinctive name 
to the now familiar woollen bed-sheet. But, 
as the article was well-known abroad by the 
same name (blanchet — from the absence of 
colour), it is more likely that the blanket 
gave its name to the brothers, than that the 
article was named after them. It was quite 
usual in those days for men to take the name 
of the article they manufactured or the trade 
they lived by. Webb cloth and Clutterbuclcs 
were, however, so called after the persons 
who first anufactured them in the west of 
England. 



456 



EARL Y FOREIGN ARTIZANS. appen dix. 



also used by travellers, soldiers, and sportsmen, instead of the loose mantle 
and puckered cloak and cape, which, with the long loose robe or gown, had been 
found very inconvenient. When bedsteads were introduced in the same reign 
— before which time people slept on rushes, straw, or fern, laid on the floor — 
blankets were introduced as part of the necessary bed-furniture ; and repeated 
mention of them is made in the ' ' Expenses of the Great Wardrobe of Edward 
III., 1347-9."* A considerable demand being thus created for the new article, 
the brothers Blanket soon became rich men, and rose to honour and dignity. 
Thomas, the youngest brother, to whom the merit of introducing the manu- 
facture was chiefly due, served as high bailiff of Bristol in 1349, and the two 
other brothers successively represented the city in Parliament — Edward in 
1362, and Edmund in 1369. 

The cloth-manufactures of Kent, also, rose into importance by reason of 
the skill and enterprise of the Flemings. They planted their fulling-mills 
along the rivers Cray and Dart ;f the weavers settling principally at Cran- 
brook, Goudhurst, and the neighbouring villages. Many of the small free- 
holders of the Weald sent their sons to learn the trade, and they afterwards 
set up as manufacturers on their own account. At county meetings the 
" Grey-coats of Kent" carried all before them — grey cloth being the prevail- 
ing colour of the Kentish article, as that of Kendal was green. The cloth- 
trade has, however, long since departed from Cranbrook, then the centre of 
the Kentish trade — its manufactures, like so many others, having migrated 
northwards ; and the only indications remaining of the extinct branch of 
industry are the ancient factories, evidently of Flemish origin, which are still 
to be seen in the principal street of the town. 

Norwich and the neighbouring towns continued to derive increasing 
advantages from the influx of foreign artizans. To the trade of spinning 
worsted, that of manufacturing it into cloth was added in 1336, after which 
date the latter branch became the leading manufacture of the city. Norwich 
was appointed by royal edict one of the ten staple towns for the sale of wool, 
woolfells, and cloths, to which merchants resorted from all parts for purposes 
of business. Enjoying such privileges, .Norwich became a centre of busy 
industry, and the adjoining towns of Worstead and Wymondham shared 
in its prosperity ; " every one," says an ancient chronicler, " having combers, 
carders, spinsters, fullers, dyers, pressers, packers, and fleece-sorters. 

While the Flemish artizans prospered, the English yeomen grew rich with 
them. " Happy the yeoman's house," says Fuller, " into which one of these 
Dutchmen did enter, bringing industry and wealth along with him. Such 
who came in strangers within the doors soon after went out bridegrooms and 
returned sons-in-law. Yea, those yeomen in whose houses they harboured 
soon proceeded gentlemen, gaining great estates to themselves, arms and wor- 
ship to their families." J 

Edward continued indefatigable in his efforts to promote the establishment 
and extension of the new branches of industry. Some of the measures which 
he adopted with this object, viewed by the light of the present day, may seem 



* Archceologia, vol. xxxi. 
t Most of the paper-mills now situated on 
these streams were originally fulling-mills, 



as is shown by the title-deeds of the pro- 
perties still extant. 
I Fuller, Church History. 



APPENDIX. 



WOOL-SMUGGLIXG. 



457 



to display more zeal than wisdom. Thus he ordered that none hut Euglish- 
niade cloth should he worn throughout England, except hy liimself and certain 
privileged persons of the higher classes. He not only fixed hy edict the prices of 
cloth, hut prescribed the kind to he worn by tradesmen, mechanics, and 
rustics, respectively, as well as the cpiality of the woollen shrouds they were to 
he buried in ! 

- To foster the home trade, Edward gave free licence to all persons whatso- 
ever to make English cloth, while at the same time he rigidly excluded that of 
foreign manufacture. He also endeavoured to prohibit the export of English 
wool : hut it was found difficult to enforce this measure, as it inflicted even 
more injury on the English wool-grower than it did on the foreign manu- 
facturer. The annual production of English wool was so large, that it was 
impossible for the Flemish immigrants, helped though they were by their English 
journeymen and apprentices, to work it up into cloth. The English market 
accordingly became glutted with wool, at the same time that the Flemish and 
French weavers continued to famish for want of raw material from England. 
Nature set up her usual remedy under such circumstances, and established the 
Smuggler. All round the coast the law was set at defiance, and wool was 
surreptitiously sent abroad through eveiy port.* As it was found impossible 
to maintain restrictions so rigid and so injurious, they were speedily relaxed. 
The export of wool was again legalised, on payment of a duty of 4:0s. the pack, 
or equal to about £6 of our present money ; and the extent of the trade may 
be inferred from the fact that the impost thus levied produced about £250,000 
a -year. 



* The restrictions on the exportation of 
English wool long continued in force, and 
"owling," or wool-smuggling, became the 
business of a large part of the coast popula- 
tion, especially along the shores of Susses 
and Kent. There was always, however, a 
strong patriotic party at home, favour- 
able to the encouragement of English 
manufactures by artificial methods, such as 
the prohibition of the export of English 
wooL The Lansdowne MSS. (796 f. 2, British 
Museum) contain a poem of the time of Henry 
IV., supposed to have been the composition 
of a monk, containing many curious refer- 
ences to this early branch of English indus- 
try. The writer says — 

" Therys nootherpope, emperowie, nor kyng, 
Bysschop, cardynal, or any man levyng, 
Of what eondicion, or what maner degree, 
Duryng theyre levyng thei must have 

Mete, drynk, and cloth, to every manne's 

sustynaunce — 
They leng alle iij, without varyaunce." 

The writer goes on to say that in respect of 
the iij, England " of all the relmes in tLe 
worlde beryih the lanteme ; " and he pro- 



ceeds to show that not only English woo 
but English cloths were in demand abroad — 
" Ffor the marchauntis comme owre wollys 

Or elles the cloth that is made thereoflf 

Oute of dyverse londes fer beyond the see, 
To have thyse merchaundyss into theyr 
contre." 

Towards the conclusion of the poem, the 
writer urges the withholding of wool from 
the foreigners as one of the most effectual 
means of promoting England's prosperity — 
" And flulle fayne that they may be subject 
to this lond, 
Yf we kepe the woollys stravtlv owt of 

their bond, 
For by the endraperyng thereoff they have 

theyre sustynaunce, 
And thus owre enmys be supportyd to our 

gret hynderaunce. 
And therfor, for the love of God in trinyte, 
Conceyve well these matoi-s, and 

scherysshe the comynalte, 
That theyre pore levyng, synfulle and 
adversyte, 

May be attratyd into wrelth, rychess, and 
prosperyte." 



458 



EARLY FOREIGN ARTIZANS. 



APPENDIX. 



At the same time, Flemish cloth was again admitted on payment of dnty ; 
for it was found that the production of English cloth was as yet insufficient 
for the home consumption. This latter measure also had the effect of stimulat- 
ing the English manufacturers to increased industry and enterprise ; and the 
result was that, before long, cloth of English make was exported in large 
quantities, not only to France, Denmark,* and Germany, but to Flanders it- 
self. Indeed, the prosperity of the woollen-trade was such, that the wealth it 
brought to the nation is said to have materially contributed to the military 
successes of Edward, and helped him to win the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, 
in like manner as the spinning- jenny of Arkwright, and the steam-engine "of 
Watt enabled us in later times successfully to contend with the gigantic mili- 
tary power of the first Napoleon. 

Various other branches of industry were about the same time planted in 
England by the Flemish and other foreign artizans. In 1368, Edward III. 
induced three Dutch clock-makers to settle in London to practise their craft : 
John and William Uninam, and John Latuyt of Delft. The kings who suc- 
ceeded Edward pursued the same policy, and from time to time induced 
fresh bodies of foreign artizans to settle in England, and begin new branches of 
skilled industry. Tims Richard II. invited a colony of Flemish linen-weavers 
to London in 1387, and they took up their abodes for the most part in Cannon 
Street, where they long prospered, t He also induced a band of silk-weavers 
from Lucca to settle in the city, and teach his subjects their trade. That the art 
must have made progress is obvious from the fact, that in 1463 the native silk- 
weavers turned round upon the foreigners and protested against their compe- 
tition. There were then said to be about a thousand women, in nunneries and 
private dwellings, practising the art of silk-throwing, and, in a petition 
presented by these silk-women to parliament, they complain of the Lombards 
and other Italians, who, they say, "import such quantities of threads, ribbands, 
and other silken articles, that they are greatly impoverished thereby." 

The art of metallurgy being a, branch of industry systematically studied 
and practised in Germany, repeated invitations, accompanied by liberal pro- 
mises of reward, were held out to German miners to settle in England. Thus 
Edward III. invited a body of them to instruct his subjects in copper-mining, 
under a grant made to certain adventurers to work the mines of Shieldam in 
Northumberland, Alstone Moor in Cumberland, and Richmond in Yorkshire. 
Henry VI. pursued the same policy; and, in 1430, we find him inviting three 
famous German miners, named Michael Gosselyn, George Harbryke, and Mathew 



* In the year 1361, we find Edward III. 
addressing Magnus, king of Norway, on 
behalf of some English merchants of Nor- 
wich, Yarmouth, St. Edmund's Bury, and 
Colchester, who had sent out a ship bound 
for Schonen, laden with woollen cloths and 
other merchandise to the value of 2000 
merks. The ship was lying in a harbour in 
Norway, when a storm came on, and the 
crew carried the goods on shore for safety, 
upon which they were seized by the king's 
officers. Hence Edward's demand for imme- 



diate restitution of the goods with damages 
to the owners, which was promptly complied 
with. 

f In a pamphlet published in 1699, 
entitled England's Advocate, Eiirope's Moni- 
tor, being an entreaty in behalf of the 
English silk-weavers and silk-thrumsters, 
the writer, speaking of the decay of the 
trade, observes : — " Sure I am, the case is 
extremely altered with the weavers, since 
Cannon Street, both sides the way, was 
nothing but weavers' workshops.— P. 36. 



APPENDIX. 



GERMAN MINERS. 



459 



Laweston, with thirty skilled workmen of Bohemia and Hungary, to super- 
intend and work the royal tin-mines in Cornwall ; and a few years later, the 
same monarch invited John de Schieldame, a gentleman of Zealand, with sixty 
workmen, to come over and instruct his subjects in the manufacture of salt. 
Edward IV. also sought the aid of Flemish artizans for less peaceful purposes ; 
for we find him, in 1471, landing a corps of three hundred Flemish armourers 
at Bavenspurg in Yorkshire, for the purpose of manufacturing hand-guns for 
his army. 

Again, in the reign of Edward VI., we find a party of German miners, con- 
sisting of labourers, smiths, carpenters, assayers, drainers, and colliers, setting 
out from Frankfort, and arriving at Antwerp, where they waited the arrival of 
a consignment of kerseys, the sale of which was to provide for their conveyance 
to England.* Elizabeth also invited skilled miners from Germany to settle in 
England, for the purpose of teaching the people the best methods of working. 
To two of these, named Hochstetter and Thurland, of Augsburg, the queen 
granted a patent to search for gold, silver, quicksilver, and copper, in eight 
counties, with power to convert the proceeds to their own use. Hochstetter 
first established copper-works at Keswick, in Cumberland, which were worked 
to great advantage. Their success was indeed such, that it was said of Queen 
Elizabeth that she left more brass than she had found iron ordnance in Eng- 
land. But when the German miners died out, the works fell into decay, and 
the mines ceased to be worked. Fuller, the church historian, writing in 1684, 
after they had been "laid in," surmised that "probably the burying of so 
much steel in the bowels of men during the late civil wars hath hindered the 
further digging of copper out of the bowels of the earth." The same Hoch- 
stetter afterwards proceeded to open out the silver- mines of Cardiganshire, in 
the township of Skibery Coed, and worked them to considerable profit. Letters- 
patent were also granted to Cornelius de Vos, a Dutchman, for working alum- 
mines ; and to William Humphreys and Christopher Schutz, a German from 
Annaburg in Saxony, to dig and work all mines besides those specified in the 
other patents. The companies formed under these grants are said to have 
turned out most advantageously both for the crown and the patentees, f 

The first saw-mills, wire-mills, and paper-mills in England were, in like 
manner, set on foot by Dutch and Germans, then highly skilled in mechanical 
engineering ; whilst the Flemings were more devoted to the various branches 
of the textile manufacture. Thus, in 1565, the Christopher Schutz above 
mentioned started the first wire-drawing mill in England. About the same 
time, Joseph Laban, a Dutchman, erected wire-works near Tintern Abbey ; 
and the descendants of the family are still traceable in the neighbourhood. 



* Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, 
1547-1553. It is nob quite clear from the 
State Paper Records that this mining party 
found kicking their heels on the Antwerp 
quays ever reached their intended destina- 
tion. 

t The art of Masting in mines is supposed 
to have been first practised in England by 
Prince Rupert, another German, who was 



well acquainted with the methods practised 
abroad. The prince for some years directed 
the Society of Mines Royal. Most of the 
mining terms still in use among miners in- 
dicate their German origin. Hence smelt, 
from schmelzen, to melt ; slag, from schlagen 
or cinder ; sump (the cavity below the 
shaft), from snmpf, a bog or pit ; spem, a 
point or buttress ; and so on with other 
terms familiar in mining operations. 



460 



EARL Y FOREIGN ARTIZANS. appendix. 



Godfrey Box of Liege began the same business at Eslier in Surrey, where it was 
afterwards continued by two Germans, Mommer and Demetrius. The art of 
needle-making was introduced by another German named Elias Crowse. Stow 
says that before his time a Spanish negro made needles in Cheapside, but 
held his art a secret. The Germans were more open, and taught other work- 
men the trade, thereby establishing a considerable branch of industry. ' ' For, 
says the quaint Fuller, " the needle is woman's pencil, and embroidery is the 
masterpiece thereof. This industrious instrument — needle, quasi ne idle, as 
some will have it — maintaineth many millions ; yea, he who desireth a blessing 
on the plough and the needle comprehends most employments, at home and 
abroad, by land and by sea. " 

Paper-making was another art introduced, like printing, from the Low 
Countries. Caxton brought over from Haarlem, about 1468, a Dutch printer 
named Frederick Corsellis,* who made his first essay at Oxford, and afterwards 
set up presses at Westminster, St. Alban's, and "Worcester. The first books 
printed by Caxton himself were printed on foreign-made paper ; but in 1507, 
one William Tate erected a mill at Hertford, where the whitey-brown paper 
was made on which Wynkyn de Worde printed his edition of Bartholomew's 
De Proprietatius Rerum, the first book printed in England on English-made 
paper. Tate's mill, however, does not seem to have prospered, and the manu- 
facture of paper was discontinued. Another was then started by one Re- 
migius, a German, who was invited into England for the purpose ; and a 
third venture was made by Sir Thomas Gresham, but all alike failed ; and it 
was not until John Spilman, the German jeweller of Queen Elizabeth, erected 
his large paper-mill at Dartford, in 1598, that this branch of manufacture may 
be said to have become established in England. The queen granted him an 
exclusive patent to "buy lynnen ragges and make paper" thereof; and 
judging from the number of men employed by Spilman, he must have carried 
on a large trade. + It may be added that the manufacture of paper still con- 
tinues a thriving branch of industry at Dartford and the neighbourhood. 

The manufacture of felt hats was introduced by Spaniards and Dutchmen 
in 1524, before which time the ordinary covering for the head was knitted 
caps, cloth hoods, and " thromed hats," the commoner people for the most part 
going bare-headed as well as bare-legged. An old writer quaintly observes — 
' ' Spaniards and Dutchmen instructed us how to make Spanish felts, and the 
French taught us not only how to perfect the mystery of making hats, but 



* In The Danger of the Church and King- 
dom Jrom Foreigners considered (London, 
1721), it is stated : — " From Holland the art 
of printing was brought into England by 
Caxton and Turner about the year 1471, 
"whom King Henry VI. sent thither to learn 
that mystery. These two fellows, not being 
able to gain their ends there, cunningly 
wheedled into England one Frederick Cor- 
sellis, a Dutch printer at Haarlem. This 
mercenary foreigner, having made his first 
essay at Oxford, set up printing-houses at 
Westminster, St. Alban's, and Worcester." 



f Thomas Churchyard, a poet of the six- 
teenth century, thus speaks of him : — 
" Then, he that made for us a paper-mill, 
Is worthy well of love and worldes good will, 
And though his name be Sp ill-man by degree, 
Yet Hclp-ma.n now, he shall be calde by me. 
Six hundred men are set at work by him, 
That else might starve, or seek abroad their 
bread ; 

Who nowe live well, and go full braw and 
trim, 

And who may boast they are with paper 
fed." 



appendix. GLASS MANUFACTURE. 



4G1 



also how to take tliemoff;" and he adds, " 'Twas in Elizabeth's reign the 
Dutch taught us to cloathe ourselves, as the French did, in another queen's 
reign, how to uncloathe ourselves."* 

Glove-making was, in like manner, taught us by foreigners ; the first 
eminent glover being one Andreas de Loos, who held a licence from Queen 
Elizabeth for making 200,000 pelts yearly, paying her Majesty 20s. the 
thousand. 

The glass-manufacture was brought into England by Venetians. Jacob 
Venalini was the first who started a glass-work, in 1564, in Crutched Friars' 
Hall, but his operations were shortly put a stop to by a fire occasioned by 
the intense heat of his furnaces, and the building was burnt down. Queen 
Elizabeth also licensed two Flemings, Anthony Been and John Care, to erect 
furnaces for making window-glass, at Greenwich, in 1567 ; and two of their 
fellow-countrymen, Peter Briet and Peter Appell, continued the manufacture. 
At that time glass was regarded as so precious, that during the Duke of North- 
umberland's absence from Alnwick Castle, the steward was accustomed to 
take out the glazed windows, and stow them away until his Grace's return — 
the glass being apt to be blown out by the high winds. Even in the next 
century, or as late as 1661, glass had not been generally introduced — the 
royal palaces in Scotland being only glazed in their upper windows, the lower 
ones being provided with wooden shutters. 

Another Italian, named James Verselyn, established a second glass-house 
at Greenwich, for manufacturing the better kinds of glass ; and Evelyn, 
writing of this " Italian glass-house," more than a century later, says that 
" glass was then blown in England of finer metal than that of Murano at 
Venice." Another glass-house was erected at Greenwich in the reign of James 
I. Some refugee Flemings established a work at Newcastle-on-Tyne,f where 
the manufacture still flourishes ; and some Venetians carried on the manufac- 
ture, helped hj the French refugee workmen, at Pinner's Hall in Austin 
Friars, London, where the best descriptions of glass were then made. The 
Flemings excelled in glass-painting ; one of them, Bernard van Linge, estab- 
lished in London in 1614, being the first to practise the art in England. This 
artist supplied the windows for Vfadham College, the beautiful window of 
Lincoln's Inn Chapel, and several subjects for Lincoln College Chapel. 

It will thus be found that in all manufactures requiring special skill, our 
main reliance was upon foreigners clown to the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury ; and the finest fabrics of all kinds were, as a rule, made almost exclusively 
by foreign workmen. Even in masonry and carpentry, when work of a supe- 
rior kind was required, as well as in drainage and engineering, the practice 
was to send abroad, not only for the master-builder or engineer, but for the 
workmen and the principal materials. Thus, when Sir Thomas Gresham built 



* Tlie Danger of the Church and Kingdom 
from Foreigners considered (Loudon, 1721). 

t It is a curious fact that the manufacture 
of window-glass in England should have 
first been attempted at Neweastle-on-Tyne 
as early as the year 670. The Abbot Bene- 



dict then brought over some glass-blowers 
from Gaul, probably Italians, for the pur- 
pose of manufacturing the glass required for 
the church and monastery of Wearmouth 
Abbey ; but wheu the glass had been made, 
the furnaces were extinguished, and re- 
mained so for more than S00 years. 



462 



EARLY FOREIGN ARTIZANS. 



APPENDIX. 



the Koyal Exchange in 1566, he brought from Flanders the requisite masons 
and carpenters to execute it, under the direction of Henryke, their master- 
builder. The foreigners also brought with them all necessary materials — the 
wainscot, the glass, the slates, the iron, and even much of the stone for the 
building. In short, as Holinshed relates, Gresham " bargained for the whole 
mould and substance of his workmanship in Flanders."* Only the labourers 
employed upon the structure were provided from amongst the London work- 
men, who do not seem to have been in great repute at the time, for Sir Stephen 
Soame says of the house-painters in Elizabeth's reign, that ' 'among the num- 
ber of three hundred painters now in London, there are not twelve sufficient 
workmen to be found amongst them, and one of these (he being fifty years 
old, and such was his poverty) was fain for his relief to wear, upon Lord 
Mayor's day, a blue gown and red cap, and carry a torch !" 

Although English manufactures were in gradual course of establishment in 
the ' face of many difficulties, t arising principally from the non -industrial 
habits of the people — for skilled industry is a matter of habit, and the pro- 
duct, it may be, of centuries of education — the English markets continued to 
be supplied with the better sorts of manufactured articles principally from 
abroad. Our iron and steel wares came from Germany, France, Flanders, and 
Spain ; our hats, paper, and linen (hollands), from Holland ; our stone drink- 
ing-pots from Cologne ; our glass from Italy and the Low Countries ; and our 
silks, bays, ribands, gloves, lace, and other articles of wearing apparel, from 
Flanders and France. The writer of an old book, entitled A Brief Account of 
English Poesy, referring to the large trade in French, Spanish, Flemish, Milan, 
and Yenetian articles, in the reign of Edward VI., observed — " I mervail no 
man taketh heed to it, what number of trifles come hither from beyond the 
seas, that we might clean spare, or else make them within our realm ; for 
the which we either pay inestimable treasure every year, or else exchange 
substantial wares and necessary for them, for the which we might receive 
great treasure." 

Under these circumstances, it was natural that the English monarchs, seeing 
the great wealth and power, as well as profitable employment for the poorer 
classes, which followed the establishment of leading branches of industry among 
the population, should have systematically pursued the policy of inviting 
foreign artizans from all countries to settle in England, and protected them by 
royal patents, thereby enabling them to pursue their several callings without 
interference from the native guilds. This course seems to have been adopted 
at different times, with more or less effect, from the reign of Edward I. down- 
wards ;+ and as late as the reign of James I. — the industry of England being 



* Holinshed, ed. 1807, i. 395." See also 
Burgon — Life of Sir T. Gresham, ii. 117. 

t The flax-manufacture was eventually 
established at Bridport ; an old charter con- 
ferring upon the town a monopoly in the 
supply of naval cordage. To be " stabbed 
with a Bridport dagger " passed into a pro- 
verb — signifying the use of Bridport rope at 
the yard-arm or the gallows. Northampton 
was said to stand chiefly on other men's 



legs, being early distinguished for its make 
of boots and shoes. Staffordshire was cele- 
brated for its nails, Sheffield for its whittles, 
Bristol for its grey soap, Taunton for its 
serges, and Eipon for its spurs — hence the 
proverb, " as true steel as Ripon rowels." 

\ Henry VIII. seems to have been a great 
patron of foreigners, for we find his cutler to 
have been one Marinus Garet, a native of 
Normandy; his goldsmith, Henry Holtes- 



appendix. GUILDS AND TRADES UNIONS. 



463 



still in as much need as ever of foreign help — we find that monarch going so 
far as to employ agents to bring from Rochelle "three prime workmen," for 
the purpose of instructing his subjects in the process of manufacturing the 
alum used in dyeing ; and the " three prime workmen" were smuggled out of 
the French port " in hogsheads." * 

These efforts made by successive English monarchs to establish new branches 
of industry were not always successful. The patents which they granted for 
the~ purpose of encouraging them frequently proved oppressive monopolies, the 
immediate effect of which was to compel the public to pay excessive prices for 
the articles made by the protected foreigners, and still the manufactures often 
refused to take root among us. The growth of the new industries were also 
to a great extent hindered by the proceedings of the manufacturers themselves. 
Few in number, they were prone to combine for the purpose of keeping up the 
prices of their commodities ; while the workmen, following their example, com- 
bined to keep up the rate of wages. Man seems by nature to be a bigot and 
monopolist in matters of trade ; but this is only saying, in other words, that he 
is selfish and that he is human. No sooner was any new branch of industry 
started, than its members set up guilds and corporations for the purpose of 
confining its benefits as much as possible to themselves. Those who were 
within the pale of the protected craft combined together rigorously to exclude 
all who were outside it. Hence the repetition by the cloth-weavers of Nor- 
wich, at a very early period, of the same tyranny which had almost ruined the 
trade of Ghent and Bruges. The Flemish weavers, who had been the victims 
of monopoly in Brabant, had scarcely established themselves in Norfolk ere 
the hard lessons which their fathers had learned were forgotten, and the trades 
unions of the Low Countries were copied almost to the letter. The usual methods 
of maintaining prices and wages were enforced — long apprenticeships, limita- 
tion in the number of apprentices, and rigorous exclusion of all "strangers." 
And when the native population at length came to learn the secrets of the trade, 
they too, in their turn, sought to exclude the very Flemings who had taught 
it them. The " cursede forrainers" were repeatedly attacked by the native 
workmen ; and, in 1369, some of them even fell victims to the popular fury. 
On this King Edward, at whose invitation they had been induced to settle in 
the country, issued a proclamation declaring the Flemish workmen to be under 
his special protection ; and the native violence was for a time held in check. 

The evils arising from the absurd restrictions of the Norwich guilds were, 
however, less easy of correction ; but they carried with them their own punish- 
ment, and in course of time they wrought their own cure. They drove away 
many workmen, who could not, or would not, comply with their regulations ; 



weller, a native of Burg in Germany ; his 
tailor, Stephen Jesper, a native of Hainault ; 
at the same time that the "chief surgeon of 
his body " was one John Veyreri, described 
as "Nemausan ex regione linguee Auxi- 
tanse." t In the same reign we find foreign 
" here brewers " settling among us ; one of 
these, bearing the appropriate name of Adam 

f See Letters of Denization in Brewer's Calendar of 
State Pax>crs, reg. Henry VIII., 1509-14. 



Barl, a native of Wesel, obtaining letters of 
denization in 1512. The king also, like 
several of his predecessors, induced a num- 
ber of German armourers, principally from 
Nuremberg, to settle in England and instruct 
his subjects in the practice of their art. 

* MacJiinery and Manvfachires oj Great 
Britain— Weale's Quarterly Papers on En- 
gineering, 117. 



4G4 



EARLY FOREIGN ARTIZANS. 



APPENDIX. 



and they prevented other workmen from settling in the place and carrying on 
their trade. The consequence was, that the artizans proceeded to other unpri- 
vileged places, mostly in the north of England, and there laid the foundations of 
the great manufacturing towns of Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield ; whilst the 
trade of Norwich itself languished, and many of its houses stood empty. To 
remedy these evils, which the cupidity of the Norwich guilds had brought upon 
their city, the Flemish artizans were appealed to, and urged by promises of 
favour and protection to settle again in the place ; for it was clear that the 
guildmen could not yet dispense with the skill and industry of the strangers. 
These invitations had their effect ; and with the increased settlements of 
Flemings (described in the text) the prosperity of the place was again restored. 

The same native hostility to the foreigners displayed itself in London and 
other towns, and occasionally led to serious public commotions, notwith- 
standing .their being under the protection of the croAvn. The vulgar and 
ignorant of all countries, as a rule, hate foreigners. Their dress is strange, 
and their language stranger ; their manners and customs are unusual, and 
their habits peculiar ; and they are almost invariably looked upon by the less 
educated classes with prejudice and suspicion, if not with hostility. This is 
especially the case where — as the ignorant poor are so ready to believe — the 
bread eaten by the foreigners is so much bread taken out of their'own mouths. 
This native aversion to the Flemish workmen, originating in these causes, 
not unfrequently displayed itself in England, and was taken advantage of by 
demagogues. Thus, when Wat Tyler burst into the city with his followers 
in 1381, the Flemings were among the first to suffer from their fury. Thirteen 
of them were dragged from the church in Austin Friars, where they had 
taken refuge ; seventeen from another church ; while thirty-two were seized 
in the Vintry, besides others in Southwark. They were carried before Wat 
Tyler, who is said to have tested the nationality of the prisoners by their 
pronunciation of the words "bread and cheese." If it sounded anything like 
"brod and cawse " they were pronounced Flemings, and executed forthwith. 
During the same revolt, the Hanseatic merchants were in great peril ; * but, 
fortunately for them, they had taken the precaution to surround their ware- 
house fortress in Dowgate with strong walls ; and, having barred their iron- 
clamped doors, they effectually resisted the assaults of the rioters until the 
authorities had recovered from their panic, and proceeded to restore civil 
order by the strong arm of the law. 

At a later period, in 1493, the mob were more successful in their attack 
upon the Steelyard, which they broke into and completely gutted. This riot 
was supposed to have been instigated by the native merchants, who were 



* The Hanseatic , merchants, or " Steel- 
yard Company of Foreign Merchants," 
occupied extensive premises in Downgard 
(now Dowgate) Ward, in Upper Thames 
Street. There they had their guildhall, 
dwellings, and warehouses, surrounded by 
a strong wall, with a wharf on the Thames. 
For a long time, nearly the whole foreign 
trade of the country was conducted by these 
merchants, who exported English -wool and 



imported foreign merchandise, paying toll 
at Billingsgate in fine cloth, gloves, pepper, 
and vinegar. The exclusive privileges of 
the Steelyard merchants at length became 
the subject of such general complaint, and 
were regarded as so prejudicial to the de- 
velopment of native commerce, that they 
were withdrawn in 1552. Their extensive 
premises occupied part of the site of the 
present Cannon Street Railway Station. 



APPENDIX. 



EVIL MAY-DAY, 1517. 



465 



jealous of the privileges granted to the strangers, under which they conducted 
almost the entire foreign trade of the country. But the antipathy of the mob 
to the foreigners reached its height about the beginning of the reign of Henry 
VIII., when a formidable riot broke out (in 1517), which was long after 
known as "Evil May-day." Large numbers of foreign artizans then crowded 
the suburbs, where they made and sold a variety of articles, to the supposed 
prejudice of the London workmen. The Flemings abounded in South wark, 
Westminster, Tottenham, and St. Catherine's, all outside the freedom of the 
city. Hall, in his Life of Henry VIII. , says, ' ' there were such numbers of 
them employed as artificers that the English could get no work." It was 
also alleged that "they export so much wool, tin, and lead, that English 
adventurers can have no living ;" and the Dutch were especially complained 
against because of their importations of large quantities of "iron, timber, 
and leather, ready manufactured, and nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools, 
tables, chests, girdles, saddles, and painted cloths." Probably the real secret 
of the outcry was that the foreign artizans were more industrious, and manu- 
factured better and cheaper things than the English could then do. One John 
Lincoln, a broker, was loudest of all in his complaints against the foreigners, 
and by his influence a popular preacher named Bell was led to denounce them 
from the pulpit ; and he declaimed with so much eloquence on the hardships 
suffered by the native-born freemen in consequence of their competition, that 
the city was soon thrown into a ferment. 

In this state of excitement, the apprentices, a rather turbulent class, en- 
couraged each other to insult and abuse the foreigners whom they met in the 
streets. On the 28th of April, a body of them set upon and beat some of the 
Flemings in so shameful a manner that the Lord Mayor found it necessary to 
interfere ; and he, accordingly, had the offenders seized by the city watch, and 
lodged in the compter. The indignation of the populace became greater 
than ever, and a riot was apprehended. Cardinal "VVolsey sent for the Lord 
Mayor and aldermen, and told them that he would hold them responsible for 
the tranquillity of the city. Prompt measures were taken to provide against 
the apprehended rising of the mob, and on Mayday-eve the magistrates re- 
solved to issue orders to every householder in the city, to keep themselves, 
their children, apprentices, and servants, strictly within doors on the follow- 
ing day ; but before the order could be issued, the riot broke out, and the cry 
was raised of "Prentices! prentices! clubs! clubs!" Several hundred 
watermen, porters, and idlers, joined the rioters, who forthwith broke open 
the compter and released the prisoners. In the meantime, the foreigners, ap- 
prehending the outbreak, had for the most part taken the precaution to depart 
from the city to Islington, Hackney, and other villages outside the walls, so 
that the rioters could only expend their fury upon their dwellings, which were 
speedily pillaged and destroyed. 

The Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey then entered the city at the head of a 
strong body of troops, and aided the Lord Mayor in capturing nearly 300 
of the rioters. Lincoln the broker, and Bell the preacher, were also 
apprehended. These, with ten others, were found guilty and sentenced to 
death ; but Lincoln only was hanged, and the others were reprieved until the 
king's pleasure should be known. Henry ordered the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs 

2 H 



466 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



and aldermen, with the prisoners, 278 in number, to appear "before him at 
Westminster Hall. The former wore mourning in token of contrition for 
their negligence ; the latter had halters round their necks. TVolsey addressed 
the magistrates in the king's name, and severely rebuked them for not having 
taken proper precautions to ensure the peace of the city, and protect the lives 
and property of the strangers who carried on their industry in the full re- 
liance that they would be protected by the magistracy as well as by the law. 
Then addressing the prisoners, "Wolsey asked them what they could plead in 
extenuation of their deep offence, and whereupon they should not one and all 
suffer death. Their sobs and cries for mercy softened the king's heart ; some 
of the nobility around him besought the pardon of the unhappy culprits, 
which was granted, and the prisoners were discharged. 

This severe lesson had its effect upon the unruly populace, and the foreign 
artizans returned to their homes, the city being compelled to make good the 
damage which had been done to them by the destruction of their dwellings 
and furniture, and the interruption of their industry. 

On the whole, the authorities acted with creditable vigour on the occasion ; 
and though discontent at the. subsequent extensive immigration of foreign 
artizans frequently displayed itself, there was never such another wild out- 
break of the London mob as that which happened on the long-remembered 
"Evil May-day." 



IL EEGISTERS OF FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCHES 
IN ENGLAND. 

The records of most of the Huguenot churches have been lost. The con- 
gregations died out, and left no traces, except in contemporary accounts of 
them, which are imperfect. The registers of some of the more important 
have, however, been preserved, and are of a peculiarly interesting character. 

A royal commission having been appointed, some twenty-five years since, to 
collect the non-parochial registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials, under 
the powers of the new Registration Act, a considerable number of the records 
of the extinct French churches were brought to light, collected, and placed in 
the custody of the Registrar-General at Somerset House, where they now are. 
The greater number of these registers originally passed through the hands of 
Mr. J. Southernden Burn, secretary to the commission, who, in 1846, pub- 
lished the results of a careful examination of them in his History of the Foreign 
Protestant Refugees settled in England. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Burn's almost exhaustive treatise, the author has 
thought it desirable to have the registers re-examined for the purposes of the 
present work ; and the following anah T sis, the result of a careful search, has 
been kindly made for him by Mr. Frederick Martin, author of The Statesman 's 
Year-Booh. 

The registers of French Protestant churches preserved at Somerset House 
are as follow : — 



appendix. FRENCH CHURCHES IN LONDON. 


467 






Dates of entries 


French Churches in London. 


in Registers. 


Threadneedle Street, City, removed to Founders Hall Chapel 


1599-1753 


St. Martin Ongar's, Cannon Street, removed to Threadneedle 




Street . . 


1690-1762 


French Chapel, Savoy, Strand ...... 


1684-1822 


Glasshouse Street Chapel 


1688-1699 


Hungerford Chapel, Hungerford Market 


1688-1727 


Le Temple .......... 


1689-1782 


Swallow Street Chapel ........ 


1690-1709 


Le Quarre, Little Dean Street 


1690-1763 


Le Tabernacle ......... 


1696-1710 


Leicester Fields Chapel . 


1699-1783 


French. Chapel Royal, St. James's ..... 


1700-1754 


Ryder's Court Chapel, St. Ann's, Westminster 


1700-1750 


La Charenton, Newport Market ...... 


1701-1704 


Les Grecs, Crown Street, afterwards in Little Edward Street 


1703-1731 


West Street Chapel, Soho 


1706-1743 


Berwick Street Chapel . . . . . 


1720-1788 


Castle Street Chapel, Leicester Square ..... 


1725-1754 


Hoxton Chapel ......... 


1748-1783 


Eglise Neuve, Church Street, Spitalfields .... 


1753-1809 


Eglise de Swan Fields, do. ....... 


1721-1735 


Eglise de St. Jean, St. John Street, do. .... 


1687-1823 


Eglise de l'Artillerie, Artillery Street, do. .... 


1691-1786 


Eglise de Wheeler Street, do. ...... 


1703-1741 


Eglise de la Patente, do. 


1689-1785 


Eglise de Crespin Street, do. ...... 


1694-1716 


Perle Street, do. ........ 


1700-1701 


Bell Lane, do. ......... 


1711-1716 


T^o*1iqp rip AThvpIip rln 


1719 


7~T 7 /V7 7 • ,7 /"V , 

Lrench Churches m the Country. 




Walloon Church, Canterbury ...... 


1581-1837 


Malt House, do 


1709-1744 


Norwich Walloon and French Church ..... 


1599-1611 


Plymouth .......... 


1733-1807 


St. Julien, or God's House, Southampton .... 


1567-1779 


Stonehouse, near Plymouth ....... 


1692-1791 


Eglise de Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex ...... 


1684-1726 


Thorney Abbey ......... 


1654-1727 



It will be observed, from the dates of the entries in the registers, that several 
of them are exceedingly imperfect. Many books have been altogether lost. 
Of those which have been preserved, the following present the principal 
features worthy of notice : — 



468 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



French Protestant Church of Threadneedle Street, London. 
Established about 1546. 

The registers of this church are in thirteen volumes, in a good state of pre- 
servation. The first volume, folio size, contains entries of baptisms and mar- 
riages from 1599 to 1636. Most of the entries are very short, giving nothing 
more than the names of the parties, and in some cases the places of their 
origin. The notices of baptism run : — " Mardy, 29 Janvier 1599, Jean le 
Quion, fils de Jean le Quion et d'Ester sa femme, fut presente au Ste Baptesme 
par Erhart Franco Anglois et Editho Ansolam, Marie Penart femme de Valentin 
Marchant et Marie Bigot femme d'Estienne Thierry ;" while the marriages are 
mostly entered as follows : — " Le dimanche 27 Janvier 1599 ; Isidore fils de 
feu Jacques Pinchon natif d'Armentiers et Bastienne du Mont veuve de 
Lazare Martin native de Valenciennes, furent epouse le diet jour." As far as 
can be judged from the earlier entries, most of the persons whose names occur 
were natives of the north of France and of the "Walloon provinces. The annual 
number of baptisms entered in the first volume averages from 80 to 150 during 
the period from 1599 to 1610, and from 140 to 100 in the years from 1611 
to 1636. 

The second volume of the registers of Threadneedle Street Church has 
entries of baptisms from 1636 to 1691, and of marriages from 1636 to 1645. 
The latter fill not more than eight pages ; but the baptisms are exceedingly 
numerous, including, as stated in the volume — a folio more than two inches 
thick — those of the chapel of L'Hopital at Spitalfields. From the commence- 
ment of the year 1670 till the end of the year 1679, the number of baptisms 
entered amounts to 1123, comprising 578 boys and 545 girls. The notices are 
very meagre, giving nothing but the names of the parents and of the godfather 
and godmother. 

The third volume contains only entries of baptisms, including, as before, 
those of L'Hopital, commencing in 1698 and ending in 1711. The baptisms 
during this period number 7032, comprising 3522 boys and 3510 girls, or an 
average of 540 per annum. In most cases the occupation of the male parent is 
given, and in nine entries out of ten it is set down as ' ' weaver," or, as frequently 
spelt, " wever." The word " ouvrier en soye" occurs up to the year 1699, 
after which the English term is substituted, not only here but in the reference 
to other trades mentioned — such as "watchmaker," " diamant-cutter," "haber- 
dasher," " ivory-turner," and " cloth -printer." Towards the end of the 
book scarcely any other trade occurs but that of " weaver." 

The fourth volume, a folio about an inch and a half thick, contains entries 
of baptisms from the beginning of 1691 till the end of 1727. All the entries 
are very short, mentioning merely the name of the parents and of godfather 
and godmother. There is much confusion in the dates, which spring forward 
and backward, making calculations of the numbers very difficult. Is o entries 
of any interest occur. 

The whole of the remaining nine volumes — of various sizes, from the largest 
folio to the smallest duodecimo — are filled with mere index-like entries of bap- 
tisms and marriages, ranging over the period from 1650 to 1753. Against 
the cover of the fifth volume is pasted the official " certificate," describing 



appendix. THREADNEEDLE STREET & THE SAVOY. 469 



the registers. It is as follows : — " The thirteen accompanying books are the 
original register-books of baptisms and marriages which have been kept for 
the church called the London Walloon Church, being of the French Protestant 
denomination, situate in Threadneedle Street, in the city of London, founded 
about the year 1546. The books have been, from time to time, in the custody 
of the consistory for the time being of the congregation, and are sent to the 
commissioners from the immediate custody of the said consistory. Signed the 
21st of October 1840. F. Martin, minister." 

Among the names which most frequently occur in the register are those of 
Du Bois, Denys, Primerose, Mahieu (Mayhew), Bultel, Brunet, Coppinger, 
Felles, Mario t (Mariott), Pinchon, Ducane or Du Quesne, Vincent, Leadbitter, 
Pontin, Waldo, De la Marre, and Papillon. 

Among the ministers of the church were Francois La Riviere and Richard 
Francois, appointed in 1550 ; Samuel le Chevalier (1591) ; Gilbert Primerose, 
also king's chaplain (1623) ; Pierre Dumoulin (1624) ; Ezekiel Marmet (1631) ; 
Charles Bertheau (1687) ; Jacques Saurin (1701) ; Ezechiel Barbauld (1704) ; 
Jean Jacques Claude, grandson of the celebrated Claude (1711) ; David Henry 
Durand (1760) ; and Jean Romilly (1766). 

French Church of the Savoy, Strand, London. 

These registers are in two folios, the first with entries of marriages from 
1684 to 1753, and the second, a much thinner volume, with entries of bap- 
tisms, marriages, banns, and sundry other notices, from 1699 to 1773. The 
title-page of the first book is " Livre des Manages de l'Eglise francoise de la 
Savoye, commence an nom de Dieu a Londres le premier May 1684." In the 
earlier entries, only the names of the bridegroom and bride, together with that 
of the officiating minister, are given ; but the latter notices are a little fuller, 
mentioning frequently the origin and domicile of the married couple, as well 
as their trade and profession. This is the case particularly from the year 1700 ? 
the first entry of which notes the nuptials of " Jean Anthoine Laroche, 
chirurgien, demeurant en Panton Street, paroisse de St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 
a l'enseigne d'un baston de chirurgien." 

In many of the descriptions of domicile there is a curious mixture of French 
and English. Under date of July 20, 1700, is entered the marriage of "Pierre 
Pinsun, lieutenant, loge en Berwick Street, nex door to Mr. Clerck, King's 
Messenger, paroisse St. James ;" and the entry after this, dated July 21, 1700, 
refers to "Jacob Bouchet, vermisseur, demeurant paroisse St. James, in St. 
James Street, chez un Sheesmonguer a l'enseigne cle l'lndien." The next four 
entries record the nuptials of " Pierre Deconde de Largni, capitaine dans les 
troupes de Hollande, demeurant en Sofolstreet chez Madame Benoist, au milieu 
de la rue ;" of " Jean Maret, officier de Marine, loge en la paroisse de St. Anne, 
Westminster, in Bruce Street, joignent l'enseigne de Marocco ;" of "Paul 
Lescot, ministre de St. Evangille, demeurant en Ruperstreet aux deux piliers 
noirs, vis-a-vis une boutique de cuisinier ou rotisseur ;" and of " Michel Cauvin, 
menusier, demeurant en Contompt Street, proche l'enseigne des trois pigeons." 
The surgeons and physicians are rather numerously represented ; and in 1704 
there is one " Estienne Baron dit Dupont, operatem- pour les dents." 



470 



REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix 



Under elate of Nov. 22, 1719, there is an entry of unusual length, differing 
inform from all others. It runs : — " Je sousigne Saville Bradely, chapelain 
de Mylord due de Eichemont, recteur de Earnly dans la province de Sussex en 
Angleterre, certifie avoir aujourdlmi marie Ecuyer Charles Theodore de 
Maxiiel, capitain dans le regiment de Gauvain au service de sa Majeste Britan- 
nique, a la demoiselle Marthe Susanne Degennes, fille de Daniel Degennes sieur 
de la Picottiere, et de dame Judith Ravenel, demeurant a Morlaix en Bre- 
tagne, dans l'hotel de son Excellence Mylord Comte de Stair, ambassadeur 
extraordinaire du Eoy de la Grande Bretagne a Paris ce neuf de Noveinbre, 
mille sept cens dix neuf." The entries from 1700 to 1726 average twenty per 
annum ; but subsecpient to the latter date there is a gradual decline, till to- 
wards the end there are not more than two marriages a-year. The last is 
dated October 14, 1753. 

The second volume of the Savoy records, a very thin folio, is filled with 
entries of baptisms, most of them very short, interspersed with notices and 
letters relating to the same. There is great confusion among the whole of the 
entries ; many of them are struck through with the pen, and queries attached 
to others. At the end is a certificate of the " Commissaires nomrnes par la 
compagnie du Consistoire de l'Eglise de la Savoie," stating that they have 
examined the registers and "corrigeles fautes qui nous out parus essentielles 
avec tout le soin et l'attention, dont nous avons ete capables." The certifi- 
cate seems to refer to many more books than those now at the General 
Register Office. 

Among the celebrated ministers of this church were — James Abbadie 
(1700), James Severin (1703), Claude de la Mothe (1705), John Dubourdieu 
(1709), Louis Saurin (1711), J. J. Majendie (1735), and David Durand, 
D.D., the well-known author. 

Swallow Street Chapel, London. 

The registers of this place of worship, bound in a thin folio, contain entries 
of baptisms and marriages, with various other notices chiefly relating to con- 
versions and " reconnoissances, " from the year 1690 to 1709. Nearly all the 
entries are of some length, with many particulars as to the birth, origin, and 
nationality of the individuals concerned. One of the first entries runs : — " Le 
Dimanche dixhuitieme jour de May 1690, a este baptise Frideric fils de Guy 
Mesniing, docteur en medecine et Anne Marie son epouse, ayant Monsieur 
"Wolfgang de Schmettau ministre d'Estat et Envoye Extraordinaire de sa 
Serenite Electorale de Brandebourg vers leur Majestes Britanniques et Mon- 
sieur Jean de Remy de Montigny gentilhomme de la Reyne pour parrain, et 
dam le - Madeleine Olyrnpe Bauchamp pour marraine, lesquels ont dit 1' enfant 
etre ne le 12 jour de May dernier, present mois et an, et ont signe." Here 
follow the signatures of the parents, godfather and godmother, with ' 1 Lamothe, 
ministre," at the end. Almost all the entries of baptism are in a similar form, 
while of the marriages the following is a specimen : — " Le Samedy septieme 
jour de Novembre an 1691, a este beny en ceste Eglise, Monsieur Mollet, 
ministre de l'Eglise francoise de Colchester, et Marguerite Bureau, presentee 
par Isaac Bureau son pere en vertu d'une licence a eux accordee le vingt- 



appendix. SWALLOW STREET SOUTHAMPTON. 



471 



neuvieme jour d'Octobre dernier et ont signe." . . . Here again follow the 
signatures of the persons mentioned, together with that of the minister. 

The notices of ' ' reconnoissance " (acknowledgment of sin or backsliding) 
are rather numerous, running usually as follows: — " Vendredy premier jour 
de l'annee 1692, Claude Richier refugie de Montpellier a temoigne en presence 
de ceste Eglise sa repentance d'avoir succombe sous le faix de la persecution 
em abjurant notre sainte Religion, ce qu'il a confirme en signant le present 
acte." There is the entry of a conversion on the next page : — " Le Dimanche 
cinq jour de May, jour de la Pentecoste, Susanne Auvray, native de Paris, a 
fait abjuration publique en ceste Eglise des erreurs et superstitions du Papisme, 
apres avoir donne des preuves d'une solide instruction, de sa piete et de ses 
bonnes moeurs, ce qu'elle a confirme en signant cet acte." The notices of 
" reconnoissances " are most numerous in the years 1692-6, after which they 
gradually fall off, disappearing entirely with the end of the century. 

Many names of distinguished persons occur among the baptismal entries. 
That of King William figures several times as godfather by proxy. The first 
time his Majesty is mentioned, it is as follows : — " Le Mercredy 13 jour de 
Decembre an 1693 a este baptise par Monsieur de la Mothe Tun des pasteurs 
de cette eglise, Guillaume Eabault, fils de Messire Jean Eabault, chevalier 
seigneur de la Coudriere et de dame Nehenee Marguerite, nee Jodouin, son 
epouse, ayant pour parrain le Tres Haut et Tres Puissant Seigneur Guillaume 
Eoy d'Angleterre, d'Ecosse, de France, et d'lrlande, par Mylord Silskirque 
(Selkirk) Tun des gentilshommes ordinaires de la Chambre de sa Majeste, et 
Mylord Jaques Due d'Ormord, et pour marraine Dame Caroline Elisabeth, 
Raugrave Palatine, duchesse de Schomberg." The name of " Monsieur Grave- 
rol, l'un cle ministres de cette eglise," occurs first in January 1691, in an entry 
of baptism, signed, in a beautiful handwriting, J. Graverol ; while the next 
entry, dated February 1691, mentions "Monsieur de Rocheblave, l'un des 
pasteurs de cette eglise." Both names occur again, at intervals, till 1698, most 
frequently that of Graverol. The names of the ministers change constantly, 
and sometimes as many as four appear in one entry. 

The remaining registers of the French churches in London contain few 
entries worthy of particular notice. ¥e therefore proceed to an examination 
of the registers of the country churches, more particularly that of the " God's 
House " at Southampton, which will be found of peculiar interest. 

Church of St. Julien, or " GocVs House," Southampton. 

The registers of this church are in one volume folio, about an inch thick, 
strongly bound, and very well preserved. The official certificate, pasted 
against the fly-leaf, states that the volume "is the original register-book of 
baptisms, marriages, deaths, and other entries, which has been kept for the 
formerly Walloon Church, but now the Protestant Episcopal French Church, 
congregating in the chapel of God's House at Southampton, founded about the 
year 1567." It is further stated that "the book has been from time to time 
in the custody of the ministers or elders for the time being, and is sent to 
the commissioners from the immediate custody of George Atherley, Esq., 



472 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



who lias kept it since 1832 as elder and trustee. This certificate bears the date 
December 22, 1837, with "Frederick Vincent," minister, at the bottom. 

The first series of entries in this volume, filling about thirty-six pages, are 
lists of persons who attended Holy Communion. The heading of the first 
page is — " Ensuyt les noms de ceux qui ont faict professio de leur foy et admis 
a la Cene le 21 de Decebre 1567." The number of communicants under this 
date is fifty-eight, the last eight in the list being distinguished as " Anglois." 
The second body of communicants, entered under date of April 5, 1568, 
number thirty-nine ; and the third, under date of July 1568, amount to 
ten. There is a great variation in the numbers set down for the following 
years ; but the entries, which at first contain the mere names, become gra- 
dually more distinct, specifying the place of origin of the communicants, and 
at times, though very rarely, the trade or profession. The trades mentioned 
are "tisseran," " boulangier," " coustelier," and "brasseur;" and the profes- 
sions "niedecin" and "ministre." The medical men are comparatively 
numerous. Among the places of origin most frequently mentioned are 
Valenciennes, Lisle, Dieppe, "Gernese" (Guernsey), and "Jerse." 

From many entries it appears that the Holy Communion was only admin- 
istered to those newly arrived in the colony after they had furnished satisfactory 
proofs of being true Protestants. The words " temoignage par ecrit," or simply 
" temoignage," are attached to a great many names. The withholding of the 
communion occurred often, and for various causes. Under date of 3d July 
1569, there is the entry: — "Cene defendue a Martin Lietart pour avoir 
battu et maure sa famme." Again, under date of 2d April 1570 : — Cene 
defendue a Jan Groza pour ivrognerie continuelle." Under date of October 
1, 1570, the entry is: — "La Cene tut suspendue a Lille le Felu pour 
ivrognerie jusques a ce qon voiroit son repentance." Under date of the 
5th of July 1573, the reason for requiring " temoignages " is distinctly 
stated to be "pour ferre paroir qu'ils estoient de la religion auparavant 
estre sortie de la France, de poeur de quelque faux frere qui vien droit 
pour espier sous ombre de la religion." Subsequent to the year 1573, there 
are many entries with the word "messe" prefixed, as showing that the 
communicants had been forced to attend mass for a time. There is a note 
relating to this subject under date of January 3, 1574. It runs : — "Tiebaut 
du Befroi, sa femme, son fils, et sa fille, apres avoir feet leur recognaissance 
publicque d'avoir este a la messe, furent tous recus a la cene." The entries of 
"messe" become less numerous subsequent to 1577 ; but there are notices 
of having "communique avec les anglois." 

There is visible confusion among the entries of the year 1583, explained 
by a note, dated the 7th of July, as follows : — " Pour la peste quy estoit au 
milieu de nous fut le lendemain de la cene de Juilet les prieres publicques 
commencees du soir tous les jours hors presche, a 5 heures du soir." The 
short list of communicants of August 1583 has a note attached — "pour nous 
fortifier en foi, en luy priant d'avoir pitie de nous." The ravages of the plague 
are visible for a long time in the small number of persons attending " la Cene," 
who, after the year 1605, are mostly strangers, producing "temoignages," or 
"avec attestation." In the whole year 1630 there are only nine communicants 
entered, six of them " jeunes lilies ;" in 1631 there are but five communicants ; 



appendix. " GOB'S HOUSE" SOUTHAMPTON. 



473 



and in 1632 but two. Then there is a blank till 1662, when one name is entered, 
while three more follow in 1665. Here end the lists of communicants. 

As a sort of appendix to these lists there follows, after a blank space, the 
entry of a conversion. It runs: — "Le 12 Aoust 1722. — Monsieur Pierre 
Carpentier pretre de l'eglise Bomaine du troisieme ordre cles franciscains, natif 
de Paris, fit abjuration publicque des erreurs de la dite eglise et fut recu a la 
paix de 1' Eglise par nous Pierre Denain, docteur en theologie, et ministre de 
cette Eglise." 

After about sixteen blank leaves a new series of entries commences, headed 
" Registre des enfans qui ont este baptisees en l'eglise des estrangers Walons 
en la Ville de Hampton admise par la Mageste de la Royne Elizabeth l'an 
1567." The baptisms commence in December 1567, when there are two, the 
fathers entered as from Valenciennes and "Hampton," and the mothers from 
London and Valenciennes. In the year 1568 the baptisms number eight ; in 
1569, nine ; in 1570, seventeen ; in 1571, six ; in 1572, ten ; in 1573, fifteen ; 
in 1574, twenty ; in 1575, sixteen ; in 1576, twenty-two ; and from 1577 to 
the end of the century, they vary from twenty to thirty. But the lists do not 
appear to have been regularly kept, for there are many blank spaces, and the 
usual formula, "fut baptize," with name of "parin" or "tesmoin," is often 
very incomplete. There are several entries " fut baptize par Monsieur Hop- 
kins, ministre anglois," in 1584. The place of origin of the parents is seldom 
given, but a description of trade or profession occurs in a few instances ; 
among them Pierre Tiedet, "orfevre;" Martin, "batteur d'estain;" and 
Philippe de la Motte, "ministre de la parole de Dieu,"— all of which names ap- 
pear frequently. "Monsieur de Bouillon, ministre de la parolle de Dieu," is 
also entered more than once among the parents. 

After the year 1600 the baptismal registers are more confused and irregular 
than before, the names of godfathers and witnesses being scarcely ever given. 
Erom 1634 to 1657 the entries entirely cease, to be resumed only in alternate 
years. Under date of the 23d of July 1665, is the following note, signed 
" Couraud, Pasteur :" — "Dieu ayant afflige notre ville du plus terrible de ses 
fleaux quj a oblige la plus part des habitans cl'abandonner leurs maisons, et 
Monsieur Bernert leur pasteur estant detenu de maladie et ayant este contraint 
de quitter sa demoure pour changer d'air a la campagne, nous avons en son 
absense baptize dans notre Eglise francoise un petit enfant Anglois appelle 
Nicolas, et ce par 1' ordre de monsieur le Maire." (Among the death entries, 
further on in the book, stands, under date of Sept. 21, 1665, "Monsieur 
Couraud, notre pasteur — peste.") 

There are only seven entries of baptism in the year 1665, among them, 
"Elizabeth, fille de Monsieur Couraud, notre pasteur." The next pastor 
mentioned is ' ' Monsieur Anthoine Cougot, ministre de ceste Eglise et Docteur 
en medecine," described, in 1691, as married to one " Anthoinette," daughter 
of " Monseigneur Marc Anthoine de Fineste du Falga, gentilhomme francois 
de la province de Languedoc." The entries about this period are few in num- 
ber — including, however, names of some distinction. A child of ' ' Abraham 
Buillon de St. Hillaire, sur Lotize en Poitou," and another of " Jean Thomes, 
apoticaire et chirurgien de la ville de Cauvisson en Languedoc," — the latter 
with "Charles Gajot de la Benaudiere, gentilhomme francois de la province 



47-4 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



de Poitou," as godfather, — are entered in 1691. As far as the origin of the 
parents is stated, the natives of France predominate in the lists subsequent 
to 1697. Many are entered as "Francois refugiez ;" some from "Basse Nor- 
man die," some from "Haut Languedoc," but the greater number from the 
province of Poitou. Under date of July 1702, one " Gerard de Vaux, francois, 
de la ville de Castres en Haut Languedoc;" is mentioned as possessed of a 
paper-mill, " demeurans au moulin a papier, dans la paroisse de South Stone- 
ham ;" and both in 1699 and in 1705 there occur names of officers "dans le 
regiment du Colonel Mordant," or "Brigadier Mordant ; " while in 1711 "Mon- 
sieur le lieutenant-general Mordant " figures as the godfather of twin sons of 
" Monsieur Francois du Chesne de Euffanes, major infanterie de Chevreux en 
Poitou." 

The entries of baptisms cease in 1779, after gradually declining in number, 
amounting to only twenty-one in the thirty-three years from 1744. During the 
whole of this period the Eeverend " Isaac Jean Barnouin " figures as " ministre 
de cette eglise ;" and a note at the end, signed "Hugh Hill, D.D., vicar of 
Holy Ehood," states that "the Eev. Isaac John Barnouin died on the 30th 
March 1797, and was buried the 6th of April 1797." 

The lists of marriages commence in December 1567, but for about 130 
years, till near the end of the seventeenth century, the entries are irregular 
and somewhat confused. Subsequently, they are full of details as to the birth, 
origin, and, at times, the profession of the bridegroom and bride. During 
the plague of 1665-6, many English couples were married in the French church, 
the English clergymen having all fled from the town. Hence such entries as 
the following: — "Jacob Berger et Sara Baylie, tous deux Englois, recevrent 
la Benediction de leur marriage p nostre pasteur en L' Eglise de St. Jean en 
cette ville, les Ministres Englois ayant abandone leur tropeaux a cause de la 
peste qui ravagoit en ce lieu ce 4 em de Decembre 1665." The folio-wing is a 
specimen of the ordinary entries : — " Le 29 Novembre 1702 a ete beni par moi 
Antoine Cougot le marriage de Jean Lefebre, orphevre de sa profession, de- 
meurant a Londres, fils de feu Jean le Fabre, marchand de la ville de Chalons 
en Champagne et de Marie Conteneau sas pere et mere, d'une part, et d'Esther 
Villeneau, fille de Charles Yilleneau marchand dans l'lsle de Be et d'Esther 
Sorre ses pere et mere d' autre part. Lequel marriage a ete benit apres la pub- 
lication de trois annonces." The entries of marriages are never numerous, 
either before or after the year 1700 — averaging, on the whole, not more than 
two a-year. From 1710 to 1720, there are but six ; from 1720 to 1730, but 
seven ; and from the latter date till 1753, only three. The Eev. Isaac Jean 
Barnouin, in the whole of his long ministry, enters but two marriages — one in 
1736, and the other in 1753. Very few of the names found in the lists of 
baptisms re-occur among the marriages, which appear to have taken place 
chiefly among persons settled at " Hamptone," or, quite as frequently, between 
natives of the Channel Islands. 

The marriage -lists are followed by twenty-three blank pages, after which 
commences the death-register. It is headed " Eegistre de Ceux qui sont mors 
de 1' eglise de Estrangers Walons admise par la Maieste de laEoyne Elizabeth en 
la Ville de Hamptone 1567." The first entries are very short, giving merely 
the name ; but in 1570 there is a lengthened notice of the death of one 



" GOD'S HOUSE/ SOUTHAMPTON. 475 



" Jlierome Dentiere," native of " Lanbrechie aupres de Lille lez flandre," fur- 
ther described as " souldat a monsieur de Bergue," who arrived ill, "et vint 
a Refuge de cette Eglise tant pour estre aide en sa nesessite come pour avoir 
consollation, et fut garde a la niaison de foy le perre bien long temps et au 
grand despens des poures, mais par la fin trespassa le 17 jour de May 1570 et 
fut ensepulture le mesme jour. ' ' The death-entries number not more than four or 
five rimes per annum for the first fifteen years, except in 1573, when there are 
nine, five of ."which are marked "passant" and "non de l'eglise," with further 
notice, in some cases, that they were "mis aux depens des poures," or way- 
farers kept by public charity. The burial of these poor took place nearly 
always the same day, and that of others the day after death. The place of 
nativity is very seldom given in the earlier entries, down to the middle of the 
seventeenth century. 

There are long lists of the dead, giving nothing more than the names, 
which were apparently entered in a batch ; the words "fut enterre le mesme 
jour " occur very frequently and regularly after the year 1600, when the first 
signs of the ravages of the plague became strongly visible. In 1601, long 
strings of names are followed by " peste," the entries throughout being of the 
shortest, such as " Catherine Martin mourut le 30 Aoust — peste," and " Pierre 
fils de Tierre Geulin niourut le jour susdit — peste." In the year 1604, 161 
persons are set down as having died of the plague, the number amounting at 
times, in August and September, to four and five a-day. In April 1605, there 
is "non-peste" after a name ; but no further deaths are entered during the 
remainder of the year. 

The first entry in 1617 is :— " Phillippe de la Motte, ministre de la parole 
de Dieu mourut le 6 de May et fust en terre le mesme jour en compaignie de 
tout le magistral." There are but three deaths on the average of the years 
1617-65, at which latter date the word "peste" again makes its appearance 
after the names. From the 15th July, when the word first occurs, till the 
end of the year 1665, twenty-three deaths from the plague are recorded. One 
more person died of the plague in August 1666, after which there stands "non- 
peste " to a name. The entries henceforth decrease further in number, and 
greatly change in phraseology. The old form is : — " Guillaume Mansell trespassa 
le 26 de Auril au matin et fut mis en terre le mesme jour sur le soir;" while the 
entries after the great plague year of 1665 are mostly as follows : — " Le sieur 
Mathieu Brohier francois refugie est mort le 29 de Juin est enterre le 30." 
The following entry occurs in 1661 : — " Ce grand Serviteur de Dieu, Paul 
Mercier, deceda le 22™e d'Aoust, estant vendredi, et fut ensepultre dedans 
cette Eglize le Lundy ensuyvant. Iceluy estant un des grand Pilliers de cette 
Eglise et plaine d'aumosne." 

There are no entries of any particular interest during the whole of the seven- 
teenth century ; the names are nearly all French, and the description "refugie "' 
very frequently accompanies the name. From 1700 till 1712 there are but 
thirty-four deaths entered, and only one in 1713. The latter is of unusual length, 
as follows : — "Demoiselle Antoinete de Ginesse de la ville de Puitaurens en 
Languedoc et femme du sieur Antoine Cougot, docteur en medecine, Eecteur 
de Millbrook et ministre de cette Eglise, est morte le 21 May 1713, et a ete 
enterre le 25 e dans l'eglise de la Toussaint proche la table de la communion.'' 



476 



REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



There is no death entered in 1714, and hut one in 1715, running : — " Monsieur 
Samuel Domain, gentilhoinme refugie, ne a Alencon est mort le 17 Juillet et 
enterre le 19 e ." 

In 1721 we find the following obituary notice filling nearly half-a-page : — 
" Monsieur Philibert d'Hervart, baron d'Hunniggen, francais refugie, mourut 
en cette ville le 30 Avril 1721, age de 46 ans et fut enterre dans l'eglise parois- 
siale d'Holirood, aupres de M. Frederic d'Hervart son fils, le mercredi suivant, 
son corps etant conduit a la sepulture par tous les ministres francois et anglois 
de cette ville et de St. Mary, et par line grande multitude de francois et 
d'anglois. Sous le regne de Guillaume troisieme il fut envoye extraordinaire 
a Geneve, en Suisse, et s'etant retire de cette ville il a laisse des marques de sa 
grande charite pour les pauvres en laissant a cette eglise un billet de £32 ster- 
ling, plus tard encore £50 sterling ; aussy bien que de son zele pour la gloire 
de Dieu en laissant pour l'entretien du ministere de cette eglise la somine de 
12 livres sterling de rentes. II avoir donne il y a environ 8 mois quatre mille 
livres sterling a l'hopital des francois refugies a Londres, vulgairenient appelle 
la Providence. Les pauvres des deux nations francoise et angliose perdent 
beaucoup a sa mort. Du veuille avoir pitie d'eux, a leur susciter des personnes 
aussy charitables." 

This entry is followed by another of some interest. It is : — "Monsieur 
Antoine Cougot, cy-devant ministre de cette eglise mourut en cette ville le 14 
de May 1721, et fut enterre le Mercredy suivant dans l'eglise paroissiale de 
Millbrook dont il etoit recteur ; il avoit servi cette eglise avec edification pen- 
dant 30 ans. " There are two more entries after this — the one stating the decease 
of " damoiselle la Cruce du Terme, fille de Monsieur le Colonnel du Terme," 
in August 1721 ; and the other that of "Monsieur Francois du Eoure," in 
March 1722. Here the death-register ends. 

After an intervening space of thirty blank leaves, another, and exceedingly 
interesting series of entries commences, specifying the Fasts and Thanksgivings 
held at the church of "God's House." The heading of these entries is : — 
" Les jeusnes publicques quy se sont fectes en ceste Eglise Contre les tamps 
d'afiiction selon la Coustume des Eglises de Dieu." The fasts, numbered in 
chronological order, extend from 1568 till the year 1667, or exactly a centuiy. 
There are altogether sixty-eight "jeusnes," besides three thanksgivings, or 
"actions de graces," all of them containing reflections on contemporary events. 

The first entry is as follows : — " Lan 1568 le 3 e jour de Setembre fut celebre 
le jeusne publicque, l'ocasion estoit que Monsigneur le Prince d'oreng de- 
scendoit dalemaigne aux paiis bas pour assaie, avec l'aide de Dieu de delivres 
les poures eglises dafliction, or pour prier plus ardament le Seigneur a la de- 
livrance de son peuple le jeusne fut celebre." 

The second entry is as follows : — "Lan 1570. Au 6 e jour de May fut 
celebre le jeusne, l'ocasion estait que Monsieur le prince de Conde et Autres 
princes de la france estantes en guerre pour maintenir la vrai religion que le 
Koy voulait abolir, perdirent une grose bataille, de quoi toutes les Eglises se 
seroient fort clesolees en pro chaines de calamite extreme. A cette cause on 
celebra le jeusne pour prier pour eux." 

The third entry runs : — " Lan 1572. Le 25 jour le Setembre fut celebre 
une jeusne publique, la raison estoit pour ce que Monsieur le Prince d'orenge 



appendix. " GOD'S HOUSED SOUTHAMPTON. 



All 



estait venn aux paiis bas avec nouvelle armee dalemaigne pour asaier a delivrer 
le pais e les pauvres eglises hors de la main du due d'Albe ce cruel tiran, et 
aussi principallement pour ce que les eglises de la France estoient en une mer- 
veilleuse et horrible calamite extreme. Une horrible massacre avoit este fait 
a paris le 24 jour daout passe, un grand nombre de nobles et de fidelles furent 
tues en une nuit, environ de 12 ou 13 milles, la Presche deffendu par tout le 
roiaume et tous les biens des fidelles pilles par tout le roiaume, or pour la con- 
sollation d'eux et des paix bas, et pour prier le Seigneur a leur delivrance fut 
celebre ce jeusne solemmel." 

The next six " jeusnes," numbered 4 to 10 (1574-5), were held to pray for 
the " pauvres eglises" of France and Holland ; also for preservation against 
the plague. The next after this, marked 11, is as follows : — " Le vingt et 
neuvieme d'aout 1576 fut celebre un jeusne public en ceste eglise priant Dieu 
de maintenir la maieste de la Reine en bone Amitie et acord avec M. le prince 
d'orenge, a la gloire de dieu et au salut et conservation des eglises." 

The next, the 12th entry, runs : — " Le 22 Novembre 1576 le jeusne fut 
celebre en ceste eglise et ce mesme jour aussi en firent autant toutes les eglises 
des estrangers refugiez en angleterre. Priant dieu pour la conservation des 
eglises de France quy se voient menachees et pour la delivrance plainiere de 
celles des pais de flandres et pour la consolassion des paures fidelles quy ont 
recu grand afliction a la destruction de la Yille d' an vers que l'espagnol a 
detruicte le 4e du present, et pour prier le Seigneur leur tenir la bride afin 
quy n'aillent point plus ontre afiigat le peuple." 

The 13th entry runs : — " Au mois de feburier mil cine cens septante et 
sept, le 4e jour fut celebre un jeusne public aves toutes les eglises estrangeres 
quy sont en Angleterre priant dieu pour les eglises quy sont en la fraiice et 
flandres a ce quelles furent gardees cotre les menees qu'on etendait que l'en- 
nemy faisoit pour les grener en rompant la paix." 

The 14th fast relates to the war in the Netherlands, prayers being directed 
against the progress of the " frere bastard du Roy d'espaine." The 15th entry 
is to the same effect — ■' Pour cause que Dom Jan d'austrice avait une grosse 
armee au paiis de brabat." The 16th fast, dated March 30, 1579, likewise 
relates to the war in the Netherlands — " l'espagnol gouverne par le prince de 
parme" being prayed against. The 17th entry runs : — " Le 23e Juilet 1579 
fut celebre le jeusne Apres la prinse de Mastrik par les espagnols priant dieu 
avoir pitie de son eglise des paiis bas, ou les aflerres sont a present en horrible 
confusion, et aussy priat a dieu que les eglises en le paiis ne soient troublees 
par la venue du due d'alencon de laquelle on parle beaucoup." [Duke d'Alen- 
§on, favoured suitor of Queen Elizabeth.] 

The next fast, the 18th, relates to an earthquake in England and France, 
as follows : — " Le 28 d'Auril 1580 le jeusne fut celebre pour prier dieu nous 
garder contre son ire quy le 6 de ce mois nous avoit este monstre par un grand 
tremblemet de terre quy a este non seulemet en tout ce Roiaume mes aussy 
Picardie et les paiis bas de la flandres. comme pour garder de guerre, de peste, 
et pour preserver les pauvres eglises de flandres e france des effors de leurs 
enemis quy requilloient leurs forces avec une grant armee d'espagne pour les 
tenir affaillir." 

The 19th fast relates to the great comet of 1581. The entry runs : — " Le 



478 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



6e d'Auril 1581 le jeusne fut celebre pour prier dieu nous garder cotre les effets 
des signes de son ire dequoy avons este menachee en la Commette quy s'est 
commencee a monstrer le 8 d'octobre et a duree jusques au 12 decebre. puis 
aussi cotre les grands cbangements et ressolutions aparentes en pais de flandres 
et ailleurs par de la, afin que de sa grace. II luy pleut tout tourner a bien 
pour le profit de son eglise. " 

The 20tli fast (January 25, 1852) relates again to tbe war in the Nether- 
lands — " pour prier pour les eglises de flandres que Ton voisit en grant con- 
fusion et afliction." Very similar is the entry of the 21st fast, dated 28th 
February 1583, held " pour prier dieu d'avoir pitie de ses eglises quy sont 
en la flandres." 

The entry of the 22d fast runs :— " Le 12 Septebre 1583 Le jusne public 
fut celebre en priant dieu pour les pauvres eglises, preniierement pour celles 
en la france quy sont en grande Menace d'affliction pour guerres. celles de 
flandres sont affliges par les espagnols et Malcontens quy gattent la flandres et 
remettent la papaute et idolatiie por toutes les villes quy prennent, et en 
troisieme lieu pour ceste eglise ici en ceste ville quy passe 5 ou 6 mois a este 
affiigee de peste de la en est morte en ceste eglise environ 50 personnes et en 
ceste ville environ 400 et continue encore l'afliction, le seigneur la veuille faire 
cesser bientost et ici et ailleurs aussi." 

The 23d fast again relates to the doings in Flandres—" les horribles guerres 
des espagnols et malcontents." The next four entries, fasts 24 to 28, are still 
concerning the wars in France and the Netherlands, and other great troubles, 
" desquels l'Eglise de dieu estoit menacee. " 

Between the 29th and 30th fasts there is an entry of thanksgiving concern- 
ing the great Armada of Spain. The entry is as follows : — "Actions de graces, 
le 29e de Novebre 1588. graces furet renclues publiquement au Seigneur pour 
la dissipation estrange de la flotte d'Espagne quy s'estoit rendue aux costes 
d'Angleterre peur conquester ledit royaume et le remettre sous la tyrannie du 
Pape." The 30th fast reflects upon the previous thanksgiving. The entry 
runs: — "Le5 de Decebre 1588 le jeusne public fut celebre afin de prier le 
Seigneur qu'il luy plaise donner aux Eglises de france et de flandres semblable 
delivrance come celle de laquele il est cidessus fait mention." 

The next entry is as follows : — "Le 19 e jour de May 1589, le jeusne fut 
publis en noctre assembles pour le celebrer le 22 du mesme mois pour prier le 
Seigneur qu'il lui plaise benir l'armee navale de la Serenissime Elizabeth roine 
d'Angleterre quy avoit fait voile cotre l'espagnol. Item pour supplier qu'il lui 
plaise aussi doner paix heureuse aux eglises de france et de flandres." 

The 32d fast relates to the change of dynasty in France. The entry runs :— 
" Le 21 d'Aout 1589 le jusne publique fut celebre en ceste Eglise de Hamptone 
come par toutes les Eglises estrangeres de ce royaume pour les troubles et 
remuements de la france a cause du transport de la couronne en la maison de 
Bourbon et les maux dequels l'Eglise estoit menacee, a cette fin que l'ire de 
Dieu estant appaisee il se montra favorable a l'Eglise." 

This fast is followed by another thanksgiving registered as follows : — " Le 
20 de Mars 1590 graces furent publiquement rendues au Seigneur pour la Victoire 
signalee que le Boy de France et de Navarre a obtenue par le faveur de l'Eternal 
des armees sur ses enemis le 14 de Mars stil nouveau aupres du village nomme 



APPENDIX. 



GOD'S HOUSED SOUTHAMPTON. 



479 



St. Andre." The 33d and 34th fasts relate to the state of affairs in France, 
and the struggle of the new king to maintain both the reformed religion and 
his crown, " choses que n'estoient point sans grandes difficultes." 

The entry of the 34th fast is followed by a note recording a visit of Queen 
Elizabeth to Southampton. The note runs: — " Le 4 de Septebre 1591 la 
Serenissime Elizabeth Koine d'Angleterre vint a Hamptone avec toute sa court 
quy estoit tres grande et partit le 7 e dudit mois envers le midi, et come elle 
partoit et estoit hors de la ville, n'ayans peut avoir acces vers sa Majeste en 
la ville, la remerciasmes de ce que passe vingt quatre ans avoit este nous main- 
tenus en ceste ville en tranquillite e repos. Elle repondit fort humainement 
louant Dieu de ce qu'il luy avoit donne puissance de recueillir et faire Men aux 
poures estrangers." 

The entries of the six fasts numbered 35-40 relate to the wars in France 
and the Netherlands, with prayers against "les nouveaux appareils du Due de 
Parme cotre le Boy." The 41st fast speaks about a general dearth of food in 
England. The entry is : — ' Le 12 de Janvier 1597 le jeusne publique fut celebre 
en cette eglise a cause de la cherete horrible par tout ce royaume de bles par 
la longue continuation des plages quy a gate la moisson et la semaille." The 
42d fast relates to the assistance given by Queen Elizabeth to Henry IV. The 
entry runs : — "Le 25 de Juliette 1597 le jusne publique fut celebre en ceste 
Eglise come aussi en les autres Eglises estrangeres pour prier le Seigneur qu'il 
luy plaite doner bons succes a 1'armee de la Eoyne." The next two entries are 
on the same subject, the fasts being "pour invocquer ardament l'Eternel qu'il 
luy plaise benir les armes de la Koine en Irlande cotre les rebelles fomantez 
par l'espagnol." 

The 45th entry runs : — " Le jeusne fut celebre en ceste eglise le 25<* Aout 
1599 par advis de la Compagnie, pour les bruits de guerre et apprehensions d'une 
flotte d'Espagne et autres remuements quy parassoient alors, afin d'induire le 
peuple a serieuse conversion au Seigneur." The next two entries relate again 
to the war in the Netherlands, notably ' ' une bataille fort furieuse entre le 
comto Maurice et l'Archiduc." 

In the 48th entry reference is made to a new outbreak of the plague, as 
follows : — "Le jusne public fut celebre particulierement en ceste eglise le 8e 
de Feburier 1604 a raison de la maladie cotagieuse de laquele nos estions 
menacez, Dieu ayant visite quelques deux a trois families en ceste ville de 
cotagio." The 49th fast relates to the affairs of Flanders, and again to the 
plague : — "Le jusne publicque fut celebre en ceste Eglise le 24 e de May 1604, 
come aussy aux autres Eglises de la laugue francoise en ce royaume, tant a 
raison de l*estat de Flandres, le conte Maurice assiegant l'Escluse et s'efforcant 
de faire lever le siege de Ostende assiegee par l'Archiduc d'Autriche ; que pour 
l'Estat de ce pays, le parlement sestenant e reeluy, aussi pour les verges de 
grand chastiement de peste que Dieu monstroite a Londres et autres endroits 
du royaume, et outre tout cela pour ce qu'en nostre Eghse nos estions apres 
la confirmation et instalation du frere Timothee Blier au Saint Ministere de 
l'Evangile." 

The next entry still refers to the plague. It runs : — " Le jusne public fut 
celebre en ceste eglise le lie de Juliette 1604 a raison de la maladie cotagieuse 
laquele estoit bien affreuse au milieu de ceste Kepublique et de nostre eglise. " 



480 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



The next is an entry of thanksgiving for the cessation of the plague, as 
follows : — " Le 16 de Janvier 1605 actions de graces puhliques et solennelles 
furet rendues au Seigneur particulierement en nostre eglise de ce qu'il avoit 
pleu a Dieu de faire cesser le grand fleau de peste tant en nostre Assemblee 
qu'en la Eepublique de ceste ville." 

The 51st fast is entered : — " Le 30 May 1605, le jeusne fut celebre en ceste 
Eglise come aussy en les autres Eglises estrangeres recueillis en ce royaume 
pour invocquer plus ardament le Seigneur pour la prosperity de cest Estat, et 
pour les estats de Hollande et autres provinces Unies qu'il plaise a Dieu benir 
leurs armes a sa gloire et au bien de toute son Eglise." 

The 52d fast again refers to the plague. The entry runs : — " Le 22 e 
d'Octobre 1606 le jusne publique fut celebre en ceste Eglise come le jour suivant 
il fust aux Eglises estrangeres recueillies en ce rcyaume a cette fin de prier le 
Seigneur a ce qu'il appaisat son ire embrazee cotre les freres de Londres lesquels 
il visitoit de grand fieau de peste, et semblablement pour le supplier d'accom- 
pagner les armees de Messeigneurs les Estats des Provinces Unies de ses faveurs 
accoustumees reprimant les gloires et triomphes profanes des ennemis de la 
verite." 

The 53d fast, occurring after an interval of eight years, refers, for the first 
time, to the Protestants of Germany. The entry is as follows : — "Le 14 de 
Sept. 1614 le jeusne fut celebre en cette Eglise au mesme jour que les autres 
estrangeres de ce royaume pour prier le Seigneur de dissiper les enterprises de 
l'empereur et du Pape et leurs confederes s'efforcants de ruiner les Eglises de 
l'Allemagne, et benir au contraire les armes de ceux qu'il suscitoit pour la 
conservation de son Eglise." 

The 54th fast has reference to France, as follows : — " Le 16 de November 
1615. Le jeusne fust celebre en ceste Eglise au mesme jour qu'en autres 
estrangeres de ce royaume a cause des troubles de la France et pour prier le 
Seigneur de conserver son Eglise a l'encontre de touts les attentats des ennemis 
de sa verite." The next two entries relate to the affairs of the Netherlands, 
notably ' ' les troubles qui incommodent les Eglises des Provinces Unies. " 
These "troubles" are more pointedly alluded to in the 57th fast, as follows : — 
" Le 28 de Septembre 1620. Le jusne fut encor celebre en ceste Eglise come 
en autres Eglises estrangeres en ce Eoyaume en consideration du Synode de 
divers paj 7 s qui estoit assemble en Holland pour appaiser les troubles qui in- 
commodoyent les Eglises des Provinces Unies. " 

The next entry principally refers to events in France : — " Le 21 de Juin 
1621. Le jusne fat encor celebre en ceste eglise comme en autres Eglises 
estrangeres de ce Eoyaume en consideration des fascheux traittements qui sont 
faicts a ceux qui font profession de la mesme religion que nous en France et 
ailleurs." In the 59th and 60th fasts reference is made to the afflictions of the 
Protestant churches in Holland and in the German Palatinate. 

The next entry, of the 61st fast, has once more reference to the plague : — 
" Le 27 de Juillet 1625. Ceste Eglise se joignit a celebrer le jusne public avec 
1' eglise Angloise tous les Mercredis selon le commandement du Eoy en con- 
sideration de la peste ayant commence a Londres et menassant tout le 
royaume." 

The entry of the 62d fast runs : — " Le second jour d'Aoust 1626. Ceste 



appendix. " GOD 'S HO USE, " SO UTHAMP TON. 



481 



Eglise se joignit encor a celebrer le jusne publique avec l'Eglise Angloise selon 
le cornmandenient du Roy en consideration des dangers qui menassent ce 
royaume." The next entry has relation to the state of the continental foreign 
churches, " l'affliction que souffrent les Egiises d'outi'e mer." 

The deliberations of the English parliament are referred to in the next fast, 
the 64th, as follows: — "Le 21 d'Auril 162S. Ceste Eglise se joingnit a 
celebrer le jusne publiq avec l'Eglise Angloise selon le commandernent du Roy 
en consideration des dangers qui menasent ce royaume et pour prier Dieu qu'il 
face reussir a, bien les deliberations du Parlement qui est assemble. " A fast 
to the same effect was held eleven months after. The entry runs : — " Le 20 
de Mars 1629. Ceste Eglise se joignit encore avec l'Eglise Angloise pour 
celebrer un jusne publique par le commandernent du Roy a mesme considera- 
tion que le precedent." 

The fresh appearance of the plague is referred to in the next, the 66th, fast, 
held after an interval of thirty-six years : — " Le 6 de Decembre 1665. Le 
jusne fut celebre en ceste Eglise noste ville estant afflige de la peste les 5 mois 
passe estant mort de nostre petitt troupeau viron 20 personnes et des Englais 
800. Le Seigneur voile bien Arrester cette vissitation et issy et ailleurs." 

The next entry relates to the great fire of London. It is as follows : — " Le 
10 d'Octobre 1666. Le jusne fut celebre en ceste Eglize par le commandernent 
du Roy come aussy en toutes les Eglizes Engloizes pour prier le Seigneur 
d'appaiser son Ire et rester ses jugemens maintenant repandu sur ce Royaume 
la ville (capitale) de Londres estant la plus grande partie consume par le 
feu." 

In the 6Sth fast (June 19th, 1667), the last of the regular entries, prayers 
are offered for "notre roi et sagloire," the occasion being "Monsieur Couraud 
notre Pasteur nous y ayant puissamment exhortez par ses predications." 

After this fast the numbered entries cease ; but there is a short appendix 
on the following page referring to two more " jeusnes " held on the 16th De- 
cember 1720 and the 8th of December 1721. Both took place, it is stated, 
" par ordre de sa majeste et de monseigneur notre evesque," the prayers being 
directed "pour preserver le royaume de la guerre." 

At the end of the book, forming the conclusion of the records of the 
Southampton " God's House," are five entries, headed " Livre pour les aferres 
survenates en ceste Eglise." The entries chiefly relate to the collection of cer- 
tain funds for the education of the children of the poorer members of the 
church. It was resolved, on the 19th July 15S1, that " de trois mois en trois 
mois les anciens et diacres iront de maison en maison pour recuiller les deniers 
que chacun voudra doner." It appears from several of these entries that 
general assemblies were held, at stated times, of the heads of families, or " chefs 
de famille," of the French Protestant churches of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, 
and Sark, united with the congregation of " God's House." Among the names 
which most frequently occur in the register, we observe those of Guillaumott, 
Page, P>aillehache, Barnouin, Cupin, Mariette, Teulin, Baucquart, Le Vasseur, 
Le Febure, Vincent, De la Motte, Prevost, Sequin, Durant, Hervieu, De Leau, 
De la Place, Sauvage, Durand, Duval, and Dupre. 

2 I 



482 



REGISTERS OF FREXCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



French Protestant or Walloon Church, Canterbury. 

These registers form nine volumes, or ten parts. The first two parts, 
bound in one volume— a long, thin, narrow octavo, the paper yellow with age, 
and the ink of rusty red — contains entries of baptisms, marriages, and deaths, 
from the year 1583 to 1630. There are evidently many leaves wanting, par- 
ticularly in the earlier portion. The entries commence in May 1583, with 
" Le 5 fut celebre le marriage de Herbert . . . (family name illegible) a Mar- 
rie Du Mourner." There are six marriages entered in May 1583 ; four in 
June, four in July, two in August, none in September, four in October, one in 
November, and two in December. Nine more marriages are entered from 
January to June 15S4 ; then these cease, and entries of baptisms commence — 
the first under date of October 15S3, as follows : — " Le 8 fut baptise 1' enfant 
de Antoine Du Bois appelle Jay," followed by the names of the godfathers and 
godmothers. There are twenty-one entries of births from October 8 to the 
end of the year 1583, and twenty-three from the 5th of January to the 5th of 
October 1584, when they come to an end. 

After two blank leaves, there now come entries of deaths, beginning with 
the year 1581, as follows : — ■" Le 27 d de Juin mourut May Dulour, ferume de 
. ." (name illegible). There are forty-one death-entries in 1581, but most of 
them evidently made some time after the event occurred, less than a line 
being given to each, and the whole in a sort of tabulated form. Baptisms, 
marriages, and deaths, in very irregular order, fill up the rest of the first 
volume. There are no features worth noticing, save the general fact that 
the names are chiefly Hebrew, such as Abraham, Daniel, and Mary ; but a 
very large proportion of the girls have the name Elizabeth given to them in 
baptism, doubtless after that of the English queen. 

The second volume commences with the year 1630, and ends with 1715. 
The entries are all of deaths. The volume is in a most dilapidated state, the 
paper dark-brown with age, the ink deep red, and many of the leaves moth- 
eaten and half-torn. A great many Dutch names occur in this volume, and 
there are frequent entries of the fact of a gravestone having been made for the 
deceased. The following is a specimen : — "Jean Jacob Yanderfleet, Docteur 
en Medecine, mourut le 3d jour de Feburier, 163J en Londres, apres avoir 
este taille de la pierre." Many names are entered of persons dying at distant 
places in England and France, and even in the West Indies. The entries 
are very irregular ; often a hundred seem to have been made at the same 
time, in a tabulated form. 

A curious entry, throwing considerable light upon these irregularities, 
occurs in 1649. After " Le 6 e Auril 1649, mourut Charle Benoit," are four 
lines as follows :— " Les jours de incroyable troubles advenu par Pouiade e sa 
faction en la rupture e descirement de l'eglise le Begistre este quelque temps 
dilaiex a este redraisse le mieux la memoire la peu porter." The death- 
entries after these words sum up the years 1645-9 ; they are very short and 
clearly imperfect ; the name Pouiade is not anywhere to be met with. 

The internal disturbances of the church appear to have continued till 1715, 
for the lists are not only most irregular but seemingly made hj an inexperienced 
hand. The last entry in vol. ii. runs: — " Le 27 d October 1715, mourout 



APPENDIX. 



FRENCH CHURCH, CANTERBURY. 



483 



Habraham Hibau, agie cle 57." The Hebrew names of baptism cease to a great 
extent in this volume, Jean and Jacques being the most common. 

The third volume of the Canterbury records is the first that is tolerably 
perfect. It contains both baptisms and marriages. The fly-leaf on the front 
is inscribed, ' ' Livre des Baptesmes de l'eglise Valone de Cantorbery depuis le 
XX1III de Juillet 1590 jusquau 15d de Mars 1602." The following is the first 
entry of baptism : — " Susanne fille de Daniel Yeron fust presentee au 
Baptisme ayant pour tesmoings Josse des Eousseaux et Joseph de Sevart, item 
Anne femme de Loys Theuclin et Pasquette femme de Michel Aman." All 
the other entries are similar, but the names of witnesses are not always given. 
At the end of the year 1592 is the following entry 1 ' Ce sont ceux qui ont este 
par le St. Baptesme mise en PAliance de Dieu en l'Eglise de Cantorbery en 
l'An 1592." 

The number of children entered as baptized in 1591 is 119 ; while in the 
following year, 1592, it amounts to 148 ; in 1593 to 141 ; in 1594 to 132 ; in 
1595 to 136 ; in 1596 to 107 ; in 1597 to 91 ; in 1598 to 72 ; in 1599 to exactly 
100 ; in 1600 to 106 ; in 1601 to 68 ; and in 1602 to only 22, as far as the 
15th of April. Here the entries of births cease. 

The entries of marriages, at the other side of the volume, appear less com- 
plete than those of baptism. There are 27 marriages entered in 1591 ; 36 in 
1592 ; 29 in 1593 ; 39 in 1594 ; 25 in 1595 ; 31 in 1596 ; 19 in 1597 ; 25 
1598 ; 22 in 1599 ; 18 in 1600 ; 15 in 1601 ; and only 4 in the first four 
months of 1602 — on January 24, February 14, March 14, and April 12. Here 
the entries of the third volume cease, a blank page being left in the middle of 
the book between the baptisms and marriages. 

Neither the baptismal nor the marriage entries of this volume contain any- 
thing specially noteworthy beyond the fact that the settlers mostly intermarried. 
The following is a specimen of the marriage-entries: — "Andrea Du Forest 
filz de Roger natif de Conty en Picardie et Marie Fluchon fille de Adam natif 
de Armentieres. " There are an extraordinary number of widows ; in some 
years they form nearly one-third of the whole entered in the marriage-lists. 
"Widowers also are numerous. 

The fourth volume of the Canterbury records is similar in arrangement to 
the third, the baptisms being entered on one side and the marriages on the 
other. There are no deaths either in this or the preceding volume. The 
entries of baptisms commence on the 18th of April 1602, and end December 
30, 1621. There are 40 baptisms entered in (the 8^ months of) 1602 ; 77 in 
1603 ; 65 in 1604 ; 66 in 1605 ; 81 in 1606 ; 82 in 1607 ; 69 in 1608 ; 59 in 
1609 ; 69 in 1610 ; 65 in 1611 ; 63 in 1612 ; 58 in 1613 ; 63 in 1614 ; 
69 in 1615 ; 56 in 1616 ; 61 in 1617 ; and 59 in 1618. During the next 
three years the entries are very confused, large numbers being evidently 
made at the same time. 

The marriage-entries, on the other side of the book, run from 1602 to 
1620, and average about 21 a-year. Most of the women of this period entered 
as married, seem to have been of the second generation of settlers, "natif de 
Cantorbery." The following is a specimen of the form of most of the marriage 
entries : — -"Le 5& de Auril Nicolas de Sentluns filz de feu Estienne natif de 
Cam bray et Anthoinette de Naux, fille de Jacques natife de Cantorbery." It 



484 



REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



appears there were also, now and then, marriages of daughters of the settle- 
ment with Englishmen ; two occur in June 1608, of George Lowe with Marie 
Colee, and John Chandler with Judith Eonsset, both marked as ' ' maries entre 
les Anglais. " Unions where the bride is English are very rare. One specially 
marked as such is "Jehan Parmentier veuf et nne Anglaise Jane Bachelar 
veufe de feu Eegnant natif de Cantorbery." 

The fifth volume, similar in arrangement to the preceding, contains bap- 
tisms and marriages from 1622 to 1611. There are 56 entries of baptisms in 
1622 ; 50 in 1623 ; 51 in 1621 ; 72 in 1625 ; 72 in 1626 ; 81 in 1627 ; 98 in 
1628 ; 81 in 1629 ; 110 in 1630 ; 100 in 1631 ; 101 in 1632 ; 124 in 1633 ; 
85 in 1634 ; and 75 in 1635. For the remaining years, till 1644, the entries 
of baptisms are somewhat irregular, averaging from 70 to SO per annum. The 
marriages entered during the period 1622 to 1644 average about 23 per 
annum. There is scarcely any influx of strangers visible during the period, 
both bride and bridegroom being set down, in nearly all cases, as " natifs de 
Cantorbery." The forms of entry are precisely the same as those in vol. iv. 
Notes of any other kind are not to be found, nor any features of special 
interest. 

The sixth volume — a thick 8vo of above 400 pages — is almost entirely 
filled with entries of baptisms, there being only nine pages devoted to mar- 
riages at the end of the book — reversed. The baptisms extend from 1644 to 
1704, and the marriages — most incomplete and fragmentary — from 1644 to 
1666, with four more in 1672, 73, 74, and 75. Both baptisms and mar- 
riages were evidently entered long after the actual event, by the hundred. The 
baptisms, for the greater part of the period, do not average more than 50 per 
annum, and for many years they are considerably less, though the evident 
imperfection of the entries leaves little room for calculation. There are no 
entries of any particular interest. Many of them are by an illiterate hand, 
and a few seem to be made by a boy or girl, intermixed with scrawls and 
various ornaments. English names are becoming very numerous, and fre- 
quently the names are given double, in French and English, as " Le Munier 
or Miller." This is repeated several times, till, in the end, an entry runs 
simply " Miller," and another " Mellor." Of the baptisms registered in 
1675 there are 34 boys and 34 girls ; about one-half the boys have the names 
" Jean," " Jacques," or " Pierre ;" while more than one-third of the girls are 
ealled " Marie." 

At the end of the year 1683 the registrar of baptisms signs his name for 
the first time : — " Enregistre Abraham Didier." The entries of this year 
appear very complete ; there are 46 boys and 31 girls. The few pages of mar- 
riages show that the immigration from other parts into the colony had nearly 
ceased at this period ; almost the whole of the brides, as well as bridegrooms, 
are entered as " natifs de Canterbury." There are no entries of special 
interest. 

The seventh volume consists of a number of loose leaves, not stitched 
together, or fastened in any way, but merely stuck into a leather case. The 
leaves, not quite 200, contain only entries of marriages and of banns of mar- 
riage, ranging from 1644 to 1704. Most of the leaves have suffered greatly 
from the ravages of time, but the entries are in a remarkably fine handwriting. 



appendix. FRENCH CHURCH, CANTERBURY. 



485 



The form is throughout as follows : — "Lel6'Avril" (year not given) "Jacques 
Villers, fils d'Arnould, natif de Cantorbery et Marie Ferre fille de Vincent, 
native de Cantorbery." The banns run : — " II y a promcsse de niariage entre 
Gedeon Despaigne fils de Jean natif de Canterbury, et Marie Le Leu fille de 
feu Jean natife de Canterbury. " Often there are three strokes (either 1 1 1 or -ff 
or =jz) against the entry of the banns, to denote that they have been pro- 
claimed three times, in which cases an appendix is not uncommon, such as — 
" lis ont este marie en l'eglise Wallonne de Cantorbery le 7' du December." 

Owing to the scattered condition of the leaves — not chronologically 
arranged — it is impossible to say over what years the entries in this volume 
extend ; from various dates, here and there, the period 1644 to 1704 seems 
probable, making it appear that this was a supplementary volume to the one 
previously noticed. Entries of special interest are wanting. 

The eighth volume is a stout folio, not half-filled, bound in thick parch- 
ment and well preserved. It contains only entries of baptisms ranging from 
1704 to 1837. The number of entries for the first fifteen years average about 
30, but they gradually dwindle down until they cease with the family of Mon- 
sieur Miette, pastor of the " Walloon Church," who appears as the last pro- 
creative member of the colony. 

On the inside of the cover of this volume are some references to books 
relating to the settlement. They are :— " The Undercroft of Canterbury 
Cathedral given to the Walloons, 1568, see Kentish Companion 1787 — to 18 
families of Walloons by 2 Eliz. see Buncombe descrip. Cath. 56, and pag. 5th ; 
under the choir is a spacious church granted in the time of 2 Eliz. to 18 
families of French refugees, and used by their descendants ever since. Com- 
mittee or Royal Bounty first granted to the French refugees 1695, see TindalVs 
contin. Rapin, page 258, n. edit, octavo." 

The ninth and last volume of the Canterbury Records is a small and very 
thin quarto, with four pages of marriage -entries on the one side, and eight 
pages of banns on the other. They extend over the time 1719 to 1747, and 
are exceedingly imperfect. There are no marriages entered between 1720 and 
1736, which is the last in the list. The banns go to 1747. There are no entries 
of any interest in this little volume. Against the fly deaf of the third volume 
of the Canterbury Registers is pasted the following " Certificate :" — 

'* The annexed or accompanying books are the original Register-books of 
marriages and baptisms which have been kept for the Chapel or Meeting-house 
called the Walloon Congregation or French Protestant Church, situate in the 
Undercroft of Canterbury Cathedral, in the county of Kent, founded about the 
year 1568. The books have been from time to time in the custody of the 
scribe of the Elders, for the time being, of the Congregation, and are sent to 
the commissioners from the immediate custody of the minister of the said 
church in the Undercroft of said Cathedral, who has kept them since 1834 as 
minister of the Congregation. Signed the 12th Sept. 1837. J. F. Mieville, 
minister ; Chas. N. Miette, elder ; M. T. Miette, deacon." 

Malthouse Chapel, Canterbury. 
These registers, which are in a large, thin folio of about thirty pages, are 
described in the official " certificate " annexed to the book as follows : — " The 



486 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



original Kegister-book of marriages and baptisms of tbe Conformist French 
Chapel, commonly called the 'Malthouse,' being of the Episcopal Church 
denomination, situate in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, in the county 
of Kent, founded about the year . . . (1709), and now dissolved. The book 
has been from time to time in the custody of the scribe for the time being, 
and is sent to the commissioners from the same persons who held the registers 
of the Walloon Congregation of the Cathedral Undercroft, in the city of Can- 
terbury, who kept it since 1817. Signed the 12th September 1837. J. F. 
Mieville, minister ; Charles 1ST. Miette, elder. " 

There are not more than thirty entries of baptisms and marriages in this 
book, the greater part of which is filled Avith matters relating to the discipline 
and government of the congregation. It appears from one of the first of these 
notices that the " Malt-House" dissenters formed themselves into a congrega- 
tion in October 1709, when forty-eight men and twelve women signed a public 
declaration, expressing their "unfeigned assent and consent to all and every- 
thing contained and prescribed in and by the Book entitled ye Book of Com- 
mon Prayer and Administration of ye Sacraments and other Kites and Cere- 
monies of ye Church of England." The leading men of this congregation, who 
were chosen " Anciens," or elders, on its formation, appear to have been Jean 
de Cleve, Abraham de la Neuve Maison, Jean de Lon, Gabriel Pain, and 
Paschal Lardeau. The notices immediately following show that hot quarrels 
broke out at once between the members of the "Walloon Church" and the 
worshippers at the " Malthouse," chiefly on account of a sum of " one hun- 
dred and four-score pounds," assigned from a charitable fund in London to 
the Canterbury refugees, and of which the new society claimed a fair share for 
its own poor. The dispute about this money was carried on with much bitter- 
ness, but how it ended is not stated. The first minister elected by the "Malt- 
house " congregation was Pierre Eichard, who certifies, under date July 30, 
1710, that he has received the sum of fifty shillings from Monsieur de Cleve, 
as his monthly salary, declaring himself "fort content et satisfait. " Pierre 
Eichard left his charge soon after, and in September 1710, Jean Lardeau was 
chosen minister, with no fixed pay, but on the understanding " qu'il jouira des 
benefices et priviledges de ceste Eglise. " Whatever the privileges consisted of, 
the benefices probably were very small, for Jean Lardeau too quitted his post 
at the end of a few months, and after him came a quick succession of other 
pastors. Under date of January 25, 1713, there is an entry stating that the 
minister and elders have learnt "avec douleur et tin sensible deplaisir," of 
there being "une diminution considerable des deniers qui se recuillent a la 
porte de ceste Eglise ;" and they exhort the members of the congregation to 
come forward more freely with their money, each " selon lesmoyens qu'il plaist 
a Dieu de lui fournir." The appeal seems to have had little effect, as far as 
can be judged from the next entries, which show a decline in the number of 
members. In 1716, Pierre le Sueur was chosen minister, succeeding Jean 
Charpentier, and retained his charge till 1744, when the entries cease. Pierre 
le Sueur made several conversions, which are noticed at great length ; and 
baptized sixty-three children during the term of his ministry, or about two per 
annum. There is only one marriage-entry in the book. In very few of the 
entries of baptism is the origin of the parents given ; but it appears, from the 



appendix. WALLOON CHURCH, NORWICH. 



487 



names which occur, that natives of France were most numerously represented 
in the congregation. This is further shown in some of the notices, where the 
members of the old French church are referred to somewhat contemptuously 
as "Walloons." Among the names entered most frequently are Sequin, 
Tevelin, Blanchard, De l'Estang, Bore, Le Due, Ricard, and Le Sueur. The 
name Layard occurs once in this entry : — " Susanne Francoise de l'Estang, 
fille de Monsieur Louis de l'Estang a ete batisee le 30 de Sept. 1728, et a eu 
pour parrain Monsieur Pierre Layard et pour marraine mademoiselle Francoise 
de St. Paul." 

Walloon Church, Norwich. 

The registers of this church are in one volume, described as follows in the 
official "certificate" pasted against the fly-leaf : — " The annexed book is the 
original register-book of baptisms and marriages which has been kept for the 
church or chapel called the French or "Walloon Church, being of the French 
Protestant denomination, situated in the city of Norwich, founded about the 
year 1590, and now dissolved, and so declared by decree of the Court of Chan- 
cery in a suit of Attorney-General v. Columbine in 1836. The book sent has 
been from time to time in the custody of the minister or deacons for the time 
being of the congregation, and is sent to the commissioners from the immediate 
custody of Edgar Tayler, of Bedford Row, in the county of Middlesex, who 
has kept it since 1834, as solicitor to Mr. Henry Martineau, the last deacon, 
from whom he received it for production in the said suit. Signed the 21st day 
of June 1837. Edgar Tayler, solicitor." 

The book, along narrow folio, about five inches broad and rather more 
than an inch thick, is tolerably well preserved, with the exception of the first 
twenty pages, which are worm-eaten, torn, and illegible. The heading of the 
first page is "Baptesmes en l'Eglise Wallonne de Norwich depuis le 22 Juin 
1595." Under date of June 29, 1595, is- the first legible entry : — " Victor du 
Bois presente un enfans pour estre bapthise et le nom de lenfan sapellera 
Elizabeth." The next entry which can be deciphered runs :— " Le 20 de Julet 
1595. Salut nous soit donne de par nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ. Moy 
Rournille Terrien et ma femme presente mon enfant pour estre baptiser en 
l'eglise de Dieu et donnons le nom David, et pour tesmoin Philippe Terrien 
mon frere et Guillame De Bonne et pour marine Ratelinne Gate et Jenne De 
Bonne-. Dieu en fasse son serviteur." The same formula, with slight 
variations, continues throughout the whole of the entries of baptism. 

There are fifty-five entries in the year 1595, commencing at the end of 
June ; sixty-nine in 1596 ; and thirty-three in 1597. The chronological order 
is very imperfectly kept in these and all the following entries, and the whole 
registry seems incomplete. In scarcely any instance is the place of origin or 
nationality of the parents mentioned ; but the names appear to be about one- 
half Flemish, and the other half French, with a tendency, in both cases, to 
Anglicise them. 

The average number of baptisms during the first half of the seventeenth cen- 
tury is thirty per annum ; but after this period they rapidly decline, till, at 
the end of another fifty years, they amount to but one or two per annum. In 
1700, there are three baptisms entered; three again in 1701, two in 1702, 



488 



REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



three in 1703, two in 1704, and less than one for the average of the next five- 
and-twenty years. 

In November 1695 occurs for the first time the name Martineau, in the 
baptism of a son of "Gaston Martineau," also called Gaston, with David 
le Monnier for godfather. Gaston Martineau has another son, named Guil- 
laume, baptized in October 1700, with Anne Paon for witness ; and a third son, 
to whom the name Elie is given, in April 1707. At this last baptism, there 
is entered as godfather " M. Baldy, ministre de ceste eglise." 

The latter name re-occurs in the next entry, which is of unusual length. 
It runs : — " Samedy matin 27 Mars 1708, a trois quart d'heure apres minuit, 
ou environ, Dieu a done une enfant a David Baldy ministre, elle a este pre- 
sente au baptesme le dimanche suivant 28 dito dans l'eglise Waloone par 
Jude Have, parrin, et Elysabet de Sauvage, marrine. La nom de l'enfant est 
Marie." 

Gaston Martineau figures again as father of a daughter, named Marguerite, 
in August 1711, the godfather and godmother being " Gaston Martineau le 
Jeune et Marie Martineau aussy la Jeune." There are forty- one more baptisms 
entered from this date till the year 1752, when the register comes to an end. 

The same names re-occur constantly in this list : — Lecohie, Barbe, 
Colombine, Pigney, and Le Monnier or Miller. The final entry is ; " Pierre 
Le Monier, anglice Miller, fils de Pierre le Monier et de Marie Steward, nac- 
quit a Norwich le 21 Juin 1752, et fut baptise le 30 du meme mois. II a eu 
pour parein son pere et sa mere pour meraine." 

At the end of the register-book of the Norwich "Walloon Church," there 
is a list of marriages, filling eight pages, and extending from October 1599 to 
May 1611. The total number of marriages entered is ninety-five. Most of 
the notices are very short, merely stating the name of bridegroom and bride, 
though in some of the earlier ones the place of origin is given. In nearly 
every instance the places mentioned are in French Flanders — Valenciennes, 
Tournay, and Lisle, occurring most frequently. There are no entries of any 
special interest. 

Against the fly-leaf at the end of the book is pasted a sheet of paper, giving, 
as stated in the heading, ' ' Copies of Inscriptions on the Monuments and Tomb- 
stones in the French Church, Norwich, arranged in order of date." There are 
thirty altogether, as follows : — 

Dates of Death. Names, Ages, and Inscriptions. 

1729. May 29. — David Martineau, set. 32. Artis chirurgise peritissimi qui 
vitam suis percaram quam plurimis proficientem at pre- 
mature deposuit. 

1759. July 20. — Kervin "Wright, aged 55 years. An eminent physician in 
this city, son of the Eev. Kervin Wright, of Debenham, 
Suffolk. 

1765. — Mary Colombine, an infant. 

1766. April 22.— Pichard Willement, aged 52. 
1766. — Peter Colombine, aged 6. 

1768. Nov. 19. — David Martineau, aged 42 years. He was eminently dis- 
tinguished as a surgeon, as a man of most amiable manners, 
and as the best of fathers. 



appendix. CHURCHES AT NORWICH AND BRISTOL. 489 



Dates of Death. Names, Ages, and Inscriptions. 

1768. Nov. 28.— John Hilyard, aged 17. 

1769. Oct. 18.— Richard Willement, aged 25. 

1770. Dec. 11.— Peter Colombine, aged 73. 

1776. July 22.— Ann, wife of John Hilyard, aged 56. 

1779. Feb. 3. — Esther, wife of Paul Colombine, and eldest daughter of 

Simeon Waller. A woman of singular merit and in- 
genuity, who lived with her husband near fifty years in 
perfect harmony and affection. 

1780. May 6.— Mary, wife of Peter Colombine, aged 86. 

1783. March 27.— John Hilyard, aged 59. 

1784. Aug. 30. — Paul Colombine, aged 85. Descended from an ancient 

family in the province of Dauphiny, in France, from 
whence his father, a man of piety, probity, and learning, 
withdrew at the Kevocation of the Edict of Nantes ; and 
having early taken a degree abroad, practised physic in 
this city. This, his youngest son, whose temperance, in- 
dustry, and moderation, through a long and blameless 
life, had merited and obtained the best and sweetest of 
human blessings, — health, competence, and content. 
1788. Dec. 7.— Catherine Blomfield, aged 86. 

1788. Dec. 19.— Hewett Rand, aged 77. 

1789. Jan. 14. — Mary, wife of Hewett Rand, aged 62. 

1790. March 14. —Hannah Finch, aged 86. 
1790. Sept. 8.— Mary Miller, aged 83. 

1797. Aug. 22. — Margaret, relict of Richard Willement, aged 85. 

1799. Nov. 3.— Elizabeth, wife of Peter Colombine, aged 28. 

1800. Nov. 26. — Sarah, wife of David Martineau, aged 74. She was eminently 

distinguished for sound judgment, active conduct, and 
piety. 

1805. — E. B. 

1807. Jan. 13.— Margaret Villement, aged 38. 
1810. Oct. 29.— Peter Colombine, aged 73. 

1816. Sept. 21. — Theodora, wife of David Colombine, aged 73. 

1817. Dec. 15. — Sarah, daughter of David Colombine, aged 51. 
1819. Nov. 2.— David Colombine, aged 86. 

1829. Jan. 13. — Melea, wife of Peter Colombine, aged 78. 
1829. Jan. 30.— Melea Colombine, aged 48. 

The above list is certified as correct by John W. Dowson, solicitor, Norwich, 
under date January 13, 1838. 

French Church, Bristol. 

The registers of this church, in three volumes, are described in the official 
" certificate " as follows :— " The accompanying books are the original register 
books which have been kept for the Chapel called the French Protestant Epis- 
copal Chapel, the service of which was first held in what is called the Mayor's 
Chapel, St. Mark the Gaunt. In 1726 they built one on the ground of Queen 
Elizabeth's Hospital for the Red Maids. The books sent have been from time 
to time in the custody of the churchwardens and the ministers, and are sent 



490 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



to the commissioners from the immediate custody of Marienne de Soyres, who 
has kept them since 1791, as the widow of the Rev. Francis de Soyres, the last 
of said congregation. — Signed the 7th of March 1838. M ne - de Soyres." In a 
letter accompanying this certificate, also signed Marienne de Soyres, it is stated 
that " the French began to arrive in Bristol in 1687, as they could escape from 
France, being sorely persecuted and forced to attend mass." " They joined," 
Madame de Soyres continues, ' ' those already settled here, most of them from 
Nantes, Saint-Onge, Rochelle, Poitou, and Guyenne ; some of the very old 
people, alive when I came to Bristol, used to say the chapel was full to excess, 
the aisle filled with benches as well as altar ; so there must have been several 
hundreds. In 1790, when we came, the congregation never amounted to more 
than sixty, and mostly of people fond of French, or those wishing to improve. 
. . . Our own children, twelve in number, were all baptized in the parish 
church of St. Michael's. . . . Neither Mr. de Soyres nor self belonged to 
the Refuge so-called. Mr. de Soyres came to this country in 1783, 1 in 1786." 
In another note Madame de Soyres states that "not a remnant is left of the 
numerous French families formerly settled in Bristol." 

The first volume of the Bristol records, a folio about an inch thick, contains 
entries of baptisms, marriages, and burials, extending over the years 1687 to 
1700. All the entries are more or less minute in their details, some of them 
filling a page or more, and the whole book is exceedingly well kept and as well 
preserved. Many of the notices are full of interest, as giving the origin, occu- 
pation, and other particulars of the members of the congregation. A remark- 
ably large number of them are described as "marmiers," " capittaine de 
navire," or "maistre de navire," and nearly all are referred to as natives of 
the southern and western provinces of France, the neighbourhood of La 
Rochelle and the Isle de Rhe being most numerously represented. Next to 
the seamen, the trades and professions chiefly occurring are * 1 Tisseran en 
laine," " Ouvrier en lame," " Orfevre," "Serrurier," " Tailleur d'habit, " " Cor- 
dier," and " Chirurgien." There are scarcely any noble names, and the whole 
of the adults referred to are entered as belonging to some profession or trade. 

The second volume contains entries of baptisms, marriages, and burials, 
ranging from 1701 to 1715. The notices are not quite as full as those of the 
first volume, but they also give, in most instances, the origin and occupation 
of the persons whose names occur. Among the burial entries is the following : 
' ' Le mardy seizieme Juin mil sept cens trois a este enterre dans ceste Eglise 
appellee le Gant, Monsieur Descairac, un des nos ministres, age denviron soix- 
ante six ans, apres avoir exerce le saint ministere et preche la pure parole de 
Dieu dans cette meme Eglise depuis le vingt neuvieme May de 1'annee mil six 
cens quatre vingt sept, sans interruption jusqu'au Dimanche avant son deces 
qu'il fut ataque d'une apoplexie sur la chaire en prechant sur les paroles du 
livre de Josue, chap. 24, parties du vers 15e, en ces mots : Choisisses vous 
aujourdhuy a quy vous voulez servir ; mais quant a moy et a ma maison nous 
servirons a l'Eternel. . . . Le corps fut conduit a 1' Eglise par tout le 
troupeau. Tin el pasteur. " Among the trades that most frequently occur are 
"ouvrier en laine," ' ' chapellier, " and "marinier." The entries greatly de- 
crease in number towards the end of the volume, and many of the names are 
English or Anglicised. 



appendix. FRENCH CHURCH AT STONEHOUSE. 



491 



The third volume contains short entries of baptisms, marriages, and burials, 
from 1715 to 1807. They only fill twenty-eight pages, and the rest of the 
book is blank. There are but three entries from 1762 to 1807 — the first, in 
1762, stating the birth of a son of " Pierre Gautier, ministre de la chapelle 
Francois ;" the second, of May 1791, mentioning the death of the same Pierre 
Gautier ; and the third, of February 15, 1807, the death of " Francois de Soyres, 
ministre." 

French Church of Stonehouse, Plymouth. 

The registers of this church are in four small volumes, described as follows 
in the official " certificate" pasted against the cover of volume the first : — 
<{ The accompanying books are the original register-books of births or baptisms, 
marriages and burials, which have been kept for the chapel called ' L'Eglise 
francoise de Stonehouse,' in the county of Devon, founded about the year 
1692, and the congregation dissolved in the year 1810. The books sent have 
been from time to time in the custody of the minister for the time being, and 
are sent to the commissioners from the custody of the incumbent of East- 
Stonehouse, who has kept them since the year 1829 ; Mr. Delacombe of Stone- 
house, trustee, having had charge of them in the interim. Signed the 3d of 
November 1840. H. A. Greaves, inc. of Stonehouse. " 

The first volume contains entries of births, marriages, and deaths, from 
1692 to 1720. They follow each other irregularly ; the baptisms and mar- 
riages are always signed by the minister, but the interspersed notices of death 
are seldom thus authenticated. There are nine entries of baptisms, one of 
marriage, and three of deaths, from July to Decemberl692, and the same pro- 
portion continues throughout, with a great decline towards the end. It is 
very rarely that the place of origin is given, though, from the names and other 
indications, it appears that nearly all the members of the church were of 
French descent. An entry, under date of October 10, 1692, runs : — " Suzanne 
Godineau, veuve, decedee le jour d'hier a este ce jour enterre au nouveau cimi- 
tiere clonne pour la sepulture des frangois refugies en ceste ville de Stone- 
house." 

There is an entry of extraordinary length under date of September 13, 1697, 
stating the marriage of " Guillaume Henry Aures, Sieur de la Combes, filz 
naturel et legitime de feu M. Aures et damoiselle Marie de Gout natif de 
Saint- Andre de Valborgne, dans le Sevenes en France et apres demeurant a 
Plymouth, d'une part, et damoiselle Louize Tordeux fille legitime et naturelle 
de feu Charles Tordeux Sieur de Belle Espine et damoiselle Anne Blaize natifue 
de Metz en Lorraine, d'autre part." The minister, Charles Delacombe, in this 
entry describes himself as " ministre de l'Eglize frangoise conformiste de 
Stonehouse. " 

The whole of the entries, from October 1697 to the end of the volume in 
July 1710, are signed — " Etienne Molenier, ministre," and bear evidence of 
great care, in the minuteness of many of the facts. Between the baptisms, 
marriages, and deaths, are various notices of another character, such as : — " le 
18 Janvier 169f. Izaac Yideau de la Trenblade en France a fait recognois- 
sance publicque de la faute qu'il a fait." Another notice, following soon after, 
is more explicit. It runs : — " Le 30 Juillet 1699, Jean Gruseiller natif de St. 
George de Didonne a fait reconnoissance publicque de la faute qu'il avoit 



492 



REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



comise en france en ayant adhere a, l'idolatrie de l'eglise romenne, par devant 
nous ministre de l'Eglise francoise de Stonhouse lejour et an que dessus. — 
Molenier." There are altogether seven of these notices, the last in 1701. The 
name Delacombe re-occurs constantly in the latter part of the volume. 

The second volume, a small thin quarto, like the previous one, contains 
entries of baptisms and marriages from 1720 to 1741. In nearly all these 
entries, the baptisms as well as the marriages, the individuals present have 
signed their names, in some instances as many as ten or twelve at a time. Most 
of the persons appear to have been able to write, for the " marks" are com- 
paratively rare, amounting to scarcely more than five in a hundred. The total 
number of entries is not above 140, or at the rate of 7 per annum, about two- 
thirds of them representing baptisms. 

Interspersed are some curious notices, described in the heading as " deli- 
berations du Consistoire," the longest of which, filling an entire page, is as 
follows: — " Notre aide soit au nom de Dieu qui a fait le ciel et la terre. 
Amen. Nous pasteur de l'Eglise francoise de Stonehouse nous estant assem- 
bles en consistoire avec les anciens de la ditte Eglise, sur la plainte a nous 
portee par Anne Eatton, veuve, contre Jacques Loiel, tous deux habitants de 
ce lieu et membres de la susditte Eglise, de ce que Jacques Loiel avoit scan- 
daleusement procede et agi enver elle et son honneur, estant alors seulle en sa 
chambre, tant de parolles que d'actions deshonnestes, avons apres avoir invo- 
ques les lumieres divines du Saint Esprit, et murement deliberez sur la plainte 
porte et sur les circonstances scandaleuses, trop connues de la plus grande 
partie des membres de la ditte Eglise, avons deja a cet egard procedez contre 
le delinquant par censures ecclesiastiques, auquel nous avons fait premier - 
ment demander a genoux pardon a Dieu et a son Eglise de son scandale et de 
sa fautte devant les anciens et devant la ditte offensee a laquelle nous lui avons 
ensuitte apres l'avoir fait relever fait faire excuse et reparation de son attendat 
devant les temoins choisis par elle, apres quoi pour peinne et punition du 
scandal du dit Jacques Loiel, nous l'avons taxe a une amende pour les pauvres 
et l'avons suspendu de la St. Cene pour six mois a, compler depuis Pacque 
jusqu a, la St. Michel, au quel temps apres avoir fait paroitre sa repentance au 
Consistoire, et lui demander d'entree restitue, sera alors restitue sans recon- 
noissance publique ; en foi de quoi nous avons signe la presente deliberation 
censure et suspension prononce en Consistoire ce 28 Mars de la presente annee 
1721. J. De Maure, pasteur. T. Delacombe, secretaire. Jaques Lardeau, 
J. Delatorte, J. Guitton." 

The next notice shows a similar exercise of judicial functions of the minister 
and elders against one Francois Alard, for ' ' rebellion manifeste contre le Pas- 
teur de l'Eglise," with the addition, that having made " reconnissance de son 
scandal," he had been pardoned, " il a ete recu a la St. Cene et retable comme 
membre fidel de la susditte Eglise." The whole of these entries are signed 
"Joseph De Maure, pasteur de Stonehouse et ministre du St. Evangile." 

The third volume of the Stonehouse records, a very small octavo of about 
twenty leaves, in the shape of a pocket-book, contains a few entries of bap- 
tisms and burials, ranging from 1743 to 1760. All the entries are signed 
"Fauriel, ministre;" and the heading of the burials is " Memoire de ceux 
qui sont morts dans mon Eglise depuis l'annee 1743." There are no notices of 



appendix. CHURCH A T THORPE-LE-SOKEN. 



493 



any interest, and the whole of the entries seem to ha ye been made merely as 
personal memoranda for the use of the pastor. 

The fourth volume, a thin quarto of about twenty-five pages, contains on 
the one side entries of baptisms from 1762 to 1791, and on the other of burials 
from 1762 to 1782. The first entry of baptism runs :— " Le 24e Septembre, 
1762, sur un Vendredi, a ete baptisee Anne fille legitime de monsieur Antoine 
Delacombe, ancien de notre Eglise et de Madame Jeane, nee Delacombe sa 
femme. Parain, Monsieur Francois Delacombe, ancien de notre Eglise. 
Maraine, Madame Jeane, femme de Jean Brock, lieutenant, pour Sa Majeste." 
The fourth entry of baptism is as follows : — " Le 23 Septembre 1764, a ete 
batisee, sur un Dimanche, Frederic Louis, fils legitime de Monsieur David 
Louis Monin, pasteur de cette Eglise et de Lydie nee Droz sa femme. Parrain, 
Monsieur Jean Brock, lieutenant, pour Sa Majeste le Roi George. Maraine, 
Madame Jeane nee Delacombe, femme de Monsieur Antoine Delacombe, Ancien 
de notre Eglise." 

There are but two baptisms entered in 1764 ; one in 1765, one in 1766, one 
in 1767, and then none till 1770, when there is again one. Under date of 
1772 is the notice, " Le service de notre ancienne Eglise frangoise de Stone- 
house a pris fin le vingt Septembre et j'ai convoque le Seigneur pour la 
nouvelle Eglise le 18th Octobre 1772, a deux heures apres midi. Martin 
Gnillaume Bataille, ministre du St. Evangile." 

There are thirty-five more entries of baptisms from 1772 till 1791, when 
the list closes. Under date 1790 there is an entry marking the commence- 
ment of the French Revolution and the Vendee troubles. It runs, "George 
Marie Eugene, fils de Francois Bertrand et de Rene le Goff natife de Basse 
Bretagne en France fut ne a Stonehouse et baptisee par moi a la maison le jour 
de sa naissance dix neuvieme d'Avril 1790. Le parain a ete le tres puissant 
Eugene Jacques Marie de Keroiiatre, chevalier, et Maraine la tres puissante 
Aline Yvesse Maria Quemper demoiselle de Lanascol. La ceremonie fut 
faite par moi Martin Guillaume Bataille, ministre." 

The entries of burials are but nineteen in number, during the years 1763 
to 1782, or one per annum. In nearly all cases it is stated that the deceased 
was " enterree dans le cimetiere de la Chapelle angloise." The first six entries 
were made, as stated in the heading, during the ministry of David Louis 
Monin — who became "pasteur," April 11, 1762 — and the rest, commencing in 
1770, are signed by Martin Guillaume Bataille. All the names that occur are 
French. There are no notices of special interest. 

French Church of Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex. 

The registers of this church, comprising baptisms, burials, and marriages, 
are in two parts, bound in one thin volume tolerably well preserved. In the 
first part, the baptisms are entered on the one side, and the burials and mar- 
riages indiscriminately on the other. The second part of the book consists of 
an index of the baptisms and marriages arranged in chronological order, from 
1684 to 1726, and followed by the notice " L'Eglise Franchise de Thorpe, faute 
de membres, fut fermee peu apres ce tems-la." 

The entries of baptisms are all of some length, each signed by the minister 
for the time being, but none of them stating the origin of the parents. There 



494 REGISTERS OF FRENCH CHURCHES, appendix. 



are thirteen entries, signed, "Severin, ministre," from March 1684 to September 
1686 ; one signed Laporte, in March 1687 ; ninety-nine signed Mestayer, from 
May 1687 to May 1707 ; ten signed Colin, from January 1708 to November 
1713 ; and seven signed Eichier, from March 1717 to January 1726, when the 
register ceases. It thus appears that the births, at the establishment of the 
colony and for some time after, averaged about five per annum, and fell down 
in the end to less than one. 

There is evidence from the minute care of the entries that the register was 
very perfect. The first entry in the book is as follows : — " Aujourd'huy 9 jour 
de Mars 1681 a este baptize Marthe, fille de Jean Sionneau et d'Elizabeth 
Maistayer ses pere et mere. De laquelle le Sieur Jean de L'estrille Sieur de la 
Glide a este parrain et mile. Marguerite Eaillard, veuve de feu le sieur 
Estrang, maraine, qui out dit que cet enfant est nee le 6 e jour du meme mois 
et de la ditte annee. Severin, ministre." All the other entries are similar, 
only varying in adding at times to the name of the parents the parish in which 
they live, most frequently "la Paroisse le Thorpe," and, in fewer instances, 
"la paroisse de Kirbv," "de Tenclrin," and others. 

The greater part of the members of the congregation were clearly agricul- 
turists ; a large proportion bear noble names — Charles de la Porte, Pierre le 
Febure, and Jacques de Mede, occur very frequently. Others less numerous 
are Abraham de Riviere, and Charles Fouquet de Bournizeau. " Paul Potier, 
maitre chirurgien," figures often in the earlier notices. From an entry under 
date of March 168f, it appears that there was a French congregation at Har- 
wich, as the godfather mentioned is " Le sieur Hypolite de Lazancy, ministre 
de la paroisse D 'Harwich et Dovercourt." 

The register of marriages and burials commences in 1684 and ends in 1718. 
As in the case of the births, every entry is signed by the minister. Marriages 
and burials succeed each other with curious regularity, and the notices 
throughout are very clear and precise. The first entry runs : — "Aujourd'huy 
13 jour de May 1681 a este beny le marriage dans l'Eglise de Thorp d'entre 
Charles de la Porte natif de St. Jean de Gardomenque en la province de Sevenes, 
d'une part, et Louise Plumail fille de deffunct Theodore Plumail, vivant mar- 
chand demeurant a Eiord en Poitou et Louise de la Vaux, ses pere and mere 
d'autre part. Severin, ministre." The next entry is : — -"Aujourd'huy 1 jour 
de May, 1685, a este enterre le corps de deffunt Isaac de Sevre dit La Chabois- 
siere decede au Seigneur le 29 d'Avril de cette annee, age d'environ soixante 
et treize ans. Severin." 

The same forms continue throughout, though in many cases of burials the 
origin or occupation of the deceased is mentioned. In September 1688, is the 
entry of the burial of "Samuel Bauchamp, cy devant avocat au Parlement de 
Paris, age de 78 ans ;" and in December 1705, that of "Pierre Espinasse, de 
la paroisse de Thorpe, chirurgien." The marriages cease altogether in 1708, 
and there are but very few deaths after this period — two in 1709, two in 1711, 
one in 1712, and one in 1718. The last entry is that of the death of " Susanne 
Grellet," and a notice at the end of the register-index states that the Grellet 
family kept the books of the congregation for a time. This notice, signed 
"Jacob Bourdillon, pasteur, " and dated November 13, 17S4, attests that 
" Monsieur Jacques Grellet s'etaut retire a Londres, m'a remis, il y a environ 



appendix. CHURCH A T THORNE Y ABBE V. 



495 



douze aus, le livre des actes et registres de Consistoire, aussi bien que celui des 
Batemes, marriages et enterrements de l'Eglise frangaise de Thorpe, lesquels j 'ai 
confie au Consistoire de mon Eglise de 1'Artillerie au Spitalfields. " 

French Church at Thorney Abbey, Cambridgeshire. 

Nothing is known of the origin of the French church at Thorney Abbey, 
which was established in 1652, and continued until 1727. The register of 
baptisms begins in 1651, and contains particulars of the names of the sponsors 
as well as parents of the children baptized. 

It is supposed that the Thorney French church was formed shortly after 
the breaking up of the "Walloon colony at Sancltoft in the Level of Hatfield 
Chase, Yorkshire, during the wars of the Commonwealth, and that many of 
the settlers then came from the northern colon}'. 

An abstract of the Sandtoft register (now lost) is given by the Be v. Joseph 
Hunter in his History of the Deanery of Doncaster, from which it would appear 
that out of seventy-one families at Sandtoft, fourteen removed to Thorney, 
bearing the names of Bentiland, Blancart, Descamps, Egar, Flahau, Le Haire, 
Hardieg, Harlay, De la Haye, De Lanoy, De Lespierre, Massingarbe, Du Quesne, 
and Taffin ; as well as members of the following families : — Arnory, Beharelle, 
Blique, DuBois, Clais, Le Conte, Coqueler, Desbiens, Desquier, LaFleur, Fon- 
taine, Frouchart, G-ouy, Hancar, Le Lieu, Marquillier, Benard, Bamery, Le 
Eoux, Le Boy, Le Talle, and Vennin. 

There are, however, numerous names in the Thorney register which do not 
occur in that of Sandtoft, more particularly those of De Bailleu, Lisy, De Seine 
(Dessein), Le Fevre, Sigie, Le Fla, Bio, Fauverque, De la Sue, Caillet, 
Wantier, Descou, Dournelle, Yseriy, Yandebeck, Du Bont, Brasseur, Sene- 
schal, etc. 

The French congregation at Thorney does not appear to have received any 
accession of members in consequence of the Bevocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
In the five years following the Bevocation not a single baptism appears in any 
family which was not settled in Thorney before that event. 

The average number of baptisms at this church from 1660 to 1670 was 39 ; 
in the following ten years, 32 ; from which time the number gradually de- 
clined, until, in the ten years ending 1727, the baptisms were only six. 

Judge Bayley, of the Westminster County Court, to whom we are indebted 
for this analysis of the Thorney register, is descended from one of the foreign 
settlers, and informs us of the singular mutations which the name of his family 
has undergone in little more than two centuries — from the original De Bailleu, 
or De Bailleux, to Balieux, Balieu, Balieul, De Bailleul, Bailleul, Balieul, 
Bayly, Badly, and eventually Bayley — all these successively appearing in the 
register, showing the tendency of foreign appellations gradually to assimilate 
themselves to those of the country in which they have become native, and 
illustrating the difficulty of preserving the spelling, and even the sound, of 
foreign family names during the course of a few generations. 



496 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



III. HUGUENOT KEFUGEES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 

The following list of the more notable men among the refugees has been 
collated from Haag's La France, Protestante ; Agnew's Protestant Exiles from 
France; Durrant Cooper's Lists of Foreign Protestants and Aliens, 1618-1688 ; 
Burn's History of the Foreign Refugees; the Ulster Journal of Archaeology ; 
and from private sources of information. It is probable that important names 
have been omitted from the list, and that the facts may in certain cases be 
inaccurately stated. Should the opportunity be afforded him, the author will 
be glad to correct such defects in a future edition. 



ABBADIE, James, D.D. : a native 
of Nay in Beam, where he was born in 
1654. An able preacher and writer ; 
first settled in Berlin, which he left to 
accompany the Duke of Schomberg into 
England. He was for some time minister 
of the Church of the Savoy, London, 
and was afterwards made Dean of Kil- 
laloe in Ireland. He died in London 
1727. For further notice see p. 300. 

ALLIX, Peter : an able preacher 
and controversialist. Born at Alencon 
1641 ; died in London 1717. Was one 
of the ministers of the great church at 
Charenton, near Paris. At the Revoca- 
tion he took refuge in England, where 
he was appointed canon and treasurer 
to the Cathedral of Salisbury. For 
further notice see p. 303. 

AMAND, or AMY AND : a Huguenot 
refugee of this name settled in London 
in the beginning of last century. His 
son Claude was principal surgeon to 
George II. ; and the two sons of the 
latter were Claudius, Under Secretary 
of State, and George (created a baronet 
in 1764), who sat in Parliament for 
Barnstaple. The second baronet as- 
sumed the name of Cornewall. His 
daughter married Sir Gilbert Frankland 
Lewis, Bart., and was the mother of 
the late Sir Cornewall Lewis, Bart., 
M.P. 

ANDRE : the name of a French 
refugee family settled in Southampton, 
from whom the celebrated and unfor- 
tunate Major Andre was descended, 
though the latter was brought up at 
Lichfield. 

AUBERTIN, Peter : a native of 
Neufchatel, in Picardy, who fled into 
England about the middle of last cen- 
tury. He was for many years an 
eminent merchant in London. His son, 
the late Rev. Peter Aubertin, vicar of 



Chipstead, Surrey, died in 1861 at the 
age of 81, leaving a numerous family. 

AUFRERE, George, M.P. : de- 
scended from a Huguenot refugee ; sat 
for Stamford in Parliament from 1761 
to 1768. 

AURIOL, Peter : a refugee from 
Lower Languedoc, who rose to eminence 
as a London merchant. The Archbishop 
of York, the Hon. and Most Rev. R. N. 
Drummond, married his daughter and 
heiress, Henrietta, and afterwards suc- 
ceeded to the peerage of Strathallan. 
The refugee's daughter thus became 
Countess of Strathallan. The present 
head of the family is the Earl of 
Kinnoul, who continues to bear the 
name of Auriol. The Rev. Edward 
Auriol is rector of St. Dunstans-in-the- 
West, London. 

BACQUENCOURT : See Des Voeux. 

BARON, Peter : Professor in the 
University of Cambridge about 1575. 
He was originally from Etampes, and 
fled to England after the massacre of 
Saint Bartholomew. He died in London, 
leaving behind him an only son, Samuel, 
who practised medicine, and died at 
Lyme-Regis in Norfolk. 

BARRE : a Protestant family of 
Pont-Gibau, near Rochelle, several 
members of which settled in Ireland. 
Peter Barre married Miss Raboteau, 
also a refugee. He was an alderman of 
Dublin, and carried on a large business 
as a linendraper. His son Isaac, 
educated at Trinity College, Dublin, 
entered the army, in which he rose to 
high rank. He was adjutant-general 
of the British forces under Wolfe at 
Quebec. He afterwards entered Par- 
liament, where he distinguished himself 
by his eloquence and his opposition to 
the American Stamp Act. In 1776 
Colonel Barre was made Vice-Treasurer 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



497 



of Ireland and Privy Councillor. He 
subsequently held the offices of Trea- 
surer of the Navy and Paymaster of the 
Forces, in both of which he displayed 
eminent integrity and efficiency. He 
died in 1802. 

BATZ : the name of a Huguenot 
family, the head of which was seigneur 
of Monan, near Nerac, in Guyenne. 
Three of the sons of Joseph de Batz, 
seigneur of Guay, escaped from France 
into Holland, entered the service of the 
Prince of Orange, whom they accom- 
panied in his expedition to England. 
Two of them, captains of infantry, were 
killed at the Boyne. 

BEAUFORT, Daniel Augustus de : 
a controversial writer ; was pastor of the 
church of the New Patent in 1728 ; of 
the Artillery in 1728 ; and of the Savoy, 
and probably Spring Gardens, in 1741. 
He afterwards went to Ireland, where 
he held the living of Navan, and was 
appointed Dean of Tuam. The descend- 
ants of the family are still in England. 
One is rector of Lymm in Cheshire ; 
another is favourably known as a no- 
velist. 

BEAUVOIR, De : the name of one 
of the most ancient families in Langue- 
doc, several branches of which were 
Protestant. Francis, eldest son of 
Scipio du Roure, took refuge in Eng- 
land at the Revocation, and obtained a 
company in a cavalry regiment. His 
two sons also followed the career of 
arms with distinction. Alexander, the 
eldest, was colonel of the 4th Foot, Go- 
vernor of Plymouth, Lieutenant-General, 
Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, etc. 
He especially distinguished himself at 
the battle of Dettingen. He went into 
France for the benefit of his health, and 
died at Bareges, whether he had gone 
for the benefit of the waters. The 
French government having refused his 
body Christian burial, in consequence of 
his being the son of a refugee Protestant, 
the body was embalmed and sent to 
England to be buried. The second son, 
Scipio, was also the colonel of an Eng- 
lish infantry regiment, and was killed at 
the battle of Fontenoy. Another family 
of the same name is sprung from Richard 
de Beauvoir, Esq., of the island of 
Guernsey, who purchased the manor of 
Balmes, in the parish of Hackney, and 
thus gave its name to De Beauvoir town. 

2 



BELCASTEL DE MONTVAILLANT 
Pierre : a refugee officer from Langue- 
doc, who entered the service of William 
of Orange. After the death of La Cail- 
lemotte at the Boyne, he was made 
colonel of the regiment. Belcastel took 
a prominent part in the Irish campaigns 
of 1690-1. He was eventually raised to 
the rank of major-general in the Dutch 
army. He was killed at the battle of 
Villa Viciosa, in Spain, in 1710. 

BENEZET, Antoine : one of the 
earliest and most zealous advocates of 
negro emancipation. He was born in 
London in 1713, of an honest refugee 
couple from Saint-Quentin, and bred to 
the trade of a cooper. He accompanied 
'his parents to America, and settled at 
Philadelphia. There he became a 
Quaker, and devoted himself with 
great zeal to the question of emanci- 
pation of the blacks, for whose children 
he established and supported schools in 
Philadelphia. He died there in 1784. 

BENOIT, N. : a refugee silk-weaver 
settled in Spitalfields. He was the 
author of several controversial works, 
more particularly relating to baptism, 
Benoit being of the Baptist persuasion. 

BERTHEAU, Rev. Charles : re- 
fugee pastor in London, a native of 
Montpelier, expelled from Paris, where 
he was one of the ministers of the great 
Protestant church of Charenton, at the 
Revocation. He became minister of 
the Walloon church in Threadneedle 
Street, which office he filled for forty- 
four years. Several volumes of his ser- 
mons have been published. 

BERNIERE, Jean Antoine de : a 
refugee officer who served under the 
Earl of Galway in Spain. He lost a 
hand at the battle of Almanza. His 
son was a captain in the 30th Foot ; 
his grandson (Henry Abraham Crom- 
melin cle Berniere), was a major-general 
in the British army ; and his great- 
grandson, married to the sister of the 
present archbishop of Canterbury, rose 
to the same rank. 

BION, Jean Francois : a native of 
Dijon, Roman Catholic curate of Ursy, 
afterwards appointed chaplain to the 
galley Sujocrbe at Toulon, which con- 
tained a large number of galley-slaves 
condemned for their faith. Touched by 
their sufferings, as well as by the patience 
and courage with which they bore them, 

K 



498 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



Bion embraced Protestantism, exclaim- 
ing, "Their blood preaches to me!" 
He left France for Geneva in 1704, and 
afterwards took refuge in London, where 
he was appointed rector of a school and 
officiated as minister of the French 
church at Chelsea. He subsequently 
proceeded to Holland, where he exer- 
cised the functions of chaplain of an 
English church. He was the author of 
several works, his best known being the 
Relation des Tourmens que Von fait 
souffrir aux Protestans qui sont sur 
les Galeres de France, published at 
London in 1708. 

BLANC, Anthony : pastor of the 
French church of La Nouvelle Patente 
in 1692. Theodore and Jean Blanc 
were two other French refugee pastors 
iu London about the same time, the 
latter being pastor of L'Artillerie. 
The Blancs were from Saintonge and 
Poitou. 

BLAQUIERE, De : a French noble 
family, of whom John de Blaquiere a 
zealous Huguenot, took refuge in Eng- 
land in 1685. One of his sons became 
eminent as a London merchant ; another 
settled at Lisburn, where^ his sister mar- 
ried John Crommelin, son of Louis. 
The fifth son, John, entered the army, 
and rose to be lieutenant-colonel of the 
17th Light Dragoons. He held various 
public offices —was Secretary of Legation 
at Paris, secretary to the Lord-Lieute- 
nant of Ireland, was made a baronet in 
1781, and raised to the peerage in 1800 
as Lord de Blaquiere of Ardkill in 
Ireland. 

BLONDEL, Moses : a learned re- 
fugee scholar in London, circa 1621, 
author of a work on the Apocryphal 
writings. 

BLONDEL, James Augustus : a dis- 
tinguished refugee physician in London, 
as well as an able scholar. The author 
of several learned and scientific treatises. 
Died in 1731. 

BLOSSET : a Nivernais Protestant 
family, the head of which was the Sieur 
de Fleury. Several Blossets fled into 
Holland and England at the Revocation. 
Colonel Blosset, of " Blosset's Foot," 
who settled in Ireland, was the owner 
of a good estate in the county of Dub- 
lin. Serjeant Blosset, afterwards Lord 
Chief-Justice of Bengal, belonged to the 
family. 



BOCHART, Francois : Haag says 
that amongst the Protestant refugees in 
Scotland, Francis Bochart has been men- 
tioned, who, in conjunction with Claude 
Paulin, established in 1730 the manu- 
facture of cambric at Edinburgh. 

BODT or BOTT, John de : a refugee 
French officer ; appointed captain of 
artillery and engineers in the British 
service in 1690. He distinguished him- 
self by the operations conducted by him 
at the siege of Naumur, to which Wil- 
liam III. mainly attributed the capture 
of the place. Bodt afterwards entered 
the service of the king of Prussia, who 
made him brigadier and chief engineer. 
He was also eminent as an architect, 
and designed some of the principal public 
buildings at Berlin. 

BOESMER DE LA TOUCHE : pas- 
tor of the French congregation at Win- 
chelsea in 1700-6. His son, of the same 
name, was a surgeon in London in 1764. 

BOILEAU DE CASTELNAU : an 
ancient Languedoc family, many of whose 
members embraced Protestantism and 
remained faithful to it. Charles, son of 
Jacques Boileau, councillor of Nismes, 
was a captain of infantry in the English 
service, who settled in England about 
the end of the seventeenth century, and 
was the founder of the English branch 
of the Boileau family, the present head 
of which is Sir John Boileau, Bart. 

BOIREAU : see Bouherau. 

BOISBELAU DE LA CHAPELLE, 
usually known as Armand de la Cha- 
pelle : left France at the Revocation. 
He was destined for the ministry from 
an early age. At eighteen he was sent 
into Ireland to preach to the French 
congregations, and after two years, at 
the age of twenty, he was appointed 
pastor of the French church at Wands- 
worth. He subsequently officiated as 
minister of the Artillery church, and of 
the French church at the Hague. He 
was a voluminous writer. 

BONHOMME : a Protestant draper 
from Paris, who settled at Ipswich, and 
instructed the artizans there in the 
manufacture of sail-cloth, which shortly 
became a considerable branch of British 
industry. 

BONNELL, Thomas : a gentleman 
of good family near Ypres in Flanders, 
who took refuge in England from the 
Duke of Alva's persecutions, and settled 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



499 



at Norwich, of which, he became mayor. 
His son was Daniel Bonnell, merchant, 
of London, father of Samuel Bonnell, 
who served his apprenticeship with Sir 
William Conrteen (a Flemish refugee), 
and established himself as a merchant 
at Leghorn. He returned to England, 
and at the Restoration was appointed 
accountant-general for Ireland. He 
died at Dublin, and was succeeded in 
the office by his son, a man eminent for 
his piety, and whose life has been writ- 
ten at great length by Archdeacon Hamil- 
ton of Armagh. 

B08ANQUET, David : a Huguenot 
refugee, naturalised in England in 16S7. 
His grandson, Samuel, was a director of 
the Bank of England. Mary, the sister 
of the latter, was the celebrated wife of 
the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, vicar of Madeley. 
Other members occupied illustrious posi- 
tions in society. One, William, founded 
the well-known bank in London. Sir 
John B. Bosanquet, the celebrated judge, 
also belonged to the family, which is now 
represented by Samuel Richard Bosan- 
quet, of Dingeston Court, Monmouth. 

BOSQUET, Andrew : a refugee from 
Languedoc, who escaped into England 
after suffering fourteen years' slavery in 
the French king's galleys. He was the 
originator of the Westminster French 
Charity School, founded in 174-7, for 
the education of children of poor French 
refugees. 

BOSTAQUET, Dumont de : for no- 
tice of, see p. 236 et scq. 

BOUFFARD : a refugee family from 
the neighbourhood of Castres, of whom 
Bouffard, Sieur de la Garrigue, was the 
head. One of the family emigrated to 
England, and, in accordance with the 
usual practice, took the name of the 
family estate. David Garrick, the tra- 
gedian, is said to have been one of his 
descendants. 

BOUHERAU, Elias, M.D., D.D. : 
a learned Huguenot refugee, who be- 
came secretary to the Earl of Galway 
in Ireland. When the earl left Ireland, 
he became pastor to one of the French 
congregations in Dublin ; was afterwards 
episcopally ordained, and officiated as 
chantor of St. Patrick's Cathedral. One 
of his sons, John, entered the church ; 
another was "Town-major" of Dublin. 
The latter altered his name to Borough, 
and from him the present Sir E. R. 



Borough, of Baseldun Park, Berkshire 
is lineally descended. 

BOURDILLON, Jacob : an able 
and eloquent pastor of several French 
churches in London. For notice of, see 
p. 350. 

BOUYERIES, Laurence des : a 
refugee from Sainghen, near Lille, in 
1568. He settled first at Sandwich, 
and afterwards at Canterbury, where he 
began the business of a silk- weaver. 
Edward, the grandson of Laurence, estab- 
lished himself in London as a Levant 
merchant ; and from that time the 
family greatly prospered. William was 
made a baronet in 1711 ; and Jacob 
was created a peer, under the title of 
Viscount Folkestone, in 1747. His son 
Philip assumed the name of Pusey on 
his marriage in 179S. The Rev. Dr. 
Pusey of Oxford is one of the sons by 
this marriage. For further notice see 
p. 392. 

BOYER, Abel : a refugee from Cas- 
tres, where he was born in 1661. He 
died, pen in hand, at Chelsea, in 1729. 
He was the author of the well-known 
French and English Dictionary, as well 
as of several historical works. 

BRISSAC, B. de : a refugee pastor 
from Chatellerault, who fled from France 
at the Revocation. We find one of his 
descendants, Captain George Brissac, a 
director of the French Hospital in Lon- 
don in 1773. Haag says that one of 
the female Brissacs became famous at 
Berlin for her sausages, and especially 
for her black puddings, which continue 
to be known there as " boudins fran- 
cais." 

BRUNET : a numerous Protestant 
family in Saintonge. N. Brunet, a pri- 
vateer of La Rochelle, was in 1662 con- 
demned to suffer corporal punishment, 
and to pay a fine of 1000 livres, unless 
within a given time he produced before 
the magistrates thirty-six young Protes- 
tants whom he had carried over to 
America. Of course the refugee youths 
were never produced. At the Revoca- 
tion the Brunets of Rochelle nearly all 
emigrated to London. We find frequent 
baptisms of children of the name re- 
corded in the registers of the churches 
of Le Quarre and La Nouvelle Patente, 
as well as marriages at the same place, 
and at Wheeler Street Chapel and La 
Patente in Soho. 



500 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



BUCER, Martin : a refugee from 
Alsace ; one of the early reformers, an 
eloquent preacher as well as a vigorous 
and learned writer. He accepted the 
invitation of Archbishop Cranmer to 
settle in England, where he assisted in 
revising the English liturgy, excluding 
what savoured of popery, but not going 
so far as Calvin. He was appointed 
professor of theology at Cambridge, 
where he was presented with a doctor's 
diploma. But the climate of England 
not agreeing with him, Bucer returned 
to Strasburg, where he died in 1551. 
■ BUCHLEIN, otherwise called FA- 
GIUS : a contemporary of Martin 
Bucer, and, like him, a refugee at Cam- 
bridge University, where he held the 
professorship of Hebrew. While in 
that office, which he held for only a few 
years, he fell ill of fever, of which he 
died, but not without a suspicion of 
having been poisoned. 

BUISSIERE, Paul : a celebrated 
anatomist, F. R. S., and corresponding 
member of various scientific societies. 
He lived for a time in London, but 
eventually settled at Copenhagen, where 
he achieved a high reputation. We 
find one Paul Buissiere governor of the 
French Hospital in London in 1729, 
and Jean Buissiere in 1776. 

CAILLEMOTTE, La : younger son 
of the old Marquis de Ruvigny, who 
commanded a Huguenot regiment at the 
battle of the Boyne, where he was 
killed. See Massue, and notices at pp. 
262 and 267. 

CAMBON : a refugee French officer, 
who commanded one of the Huguenot 
regiments raised in London in 1689. 
He fought at the Boyne and at Athlone, 
and died in 1693. 

CAPPEL, Louis : characterised as the 
father of sacred criticism. He was born 
at Saint Elier in 1585 ; at twenty he 
Was selected by the Duke of Bouillon 
as tutor for his son. Four years later, 
the church at Bordeaux furnished him 
with the means of visiting the principal 
academies of England, Holland, and 
Germany. He passed two years at Ox- 
ford, during which he principally occu- 
pied himself with the study of the 
Semitic languages. He subsequently 
occupied the chair of theology in the 
university of Saumur, until his death, 
which occurred in 1658. Bishop Hall 



designated Louis Cappel "the grand 
oracle of the Hebraists." Louis' son 
James, was appointed professor of 
Hebrew in the same university at the 
early age of nineteen. At the Revoca- 
tion he took refuge in England, and 
became professor of Latin in the Non- 
conformist College, Hoxton Square, 
London. See notice at p. 309. 

CARBONEL, John : son of Thomas 
Carbonel, merchant of Caen ; John was 
one of the secretaries of Louis XIV. 
and fled to England at the Revocation. 
His brother William became an eminent 
merchant in London. 

CARLE, Peter : a native of Valler- 
augue in the Cevennes, born 1666 ; 
died in London 1730. He fled from 
France at the Revocation, passing by 
Geneva through Switzerland into Hol- 
land, and finally into England. He 
entered the corps of engineers in the 
army of William, and fought at the 
Boyne ; afterwards accompanying the 
army through all its campaigns in the 
Low Countries. He rose to be fourth 
engineer in the British service, and 
retired upon a pension in 1693. He 
afterwards served under Lord Galway 
in Spain, when the king of Portugal 
made him lieutenant-general and en- 
gineer-in-chief. In 1720 he returned 
to England, and devoted the rest of his 
life to the improvement of agriculture, 
on which subject he wrote and pub- 
lished many useful works. 

CARRE : a Protestant family of 
Poitou, of which several members 
emigrated to England, and others to 
North America. A M. Carre officiated 
as reader in the French church at 
Hammersmith ; and another of the 
same name was minister of La Patente 
in London. We also find one Francis 
Carre a member of the consistory of 
New York in 1772. 

CARTAUD or CARTAULT, Mat- 
thew : a Protestant minister who fled 
from France at the time of the Bar- 
tholomew massacre, and officiated as 
pastor of the little church of fugitives 
at Rye, afterwards returning to Dieppe ; 
and again (on the revival of the perse- 
cution) finally settling and dying in 
England. One of his sons was minister 
of La Nouvelle Patente in London in 
1696. 

CASAUBON, Isaac : son of a French 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



501 



refugee from Bordeaux settled at 
Geneva, where lie was born in 1559. 
His father returned to Paris on the 
temporary cessation of the persecution, 
became minister of a congregation at 
Crest, and proceeded with the education 
of his son Isaac, who gave signs of ex- 
traordinary abilities. At nine years of 
age lie spoke Lathi with fluency. At 
the massacre of Saiut Bartholomew the 
family fled into concealment, and it was 
while hiding in a cavern that Isaac re- 
ceived from Ms father his first lesson in 
Greek. At nineteen he was sent to the 
academy of Geneva, where he studied 
jurisprudence under Pacius, theology 
under De Beza, and Oriental languages 
under Chevalier ; but no branch of learn- 
ing attracted him more than Greek, 
and he was, at the age of twenty-four, 
appointed professor of that language at 
Geneva. His large family induced 
him to return to France, accepting 
the professorship of civil laws in the 
university of Montpelier ; and there 
he settled for a time. On the revival 
of persecution in France at the assassina- 
tion of Henry IV. , Casaubon emigrated 
to England. He was well received by 
James I., who gave him a pension, and 
appointed him prebend of Westminster. 
He died at London in 1611, leaving be- 
hind him twenty sons and daughters 
and a large number of works written 
during his lifetime, chiefly on classical 
and religious subjects. His son Florence 
Stephen Casaubon, D.D., having accom- 
panied his father into England, was 
entered a student at Christ Church, 
Oxford, in 1614, where he greatly dis- 
tinguished himself. In 1622 he took 
the degree of M.A. He was appointed 
rector of Ickharu, and afterwards pre- 
bendary of Canterbury. He was the 
author of many learned works. He 
died at Canterbury in 1671. 

CAUX, De : many refugees of this 
name fled from Normandy into Eng- 
land. Several of them came over from 
Dieppe and settled in Norwich, their 
names frequently occrirring in the re- 
gisters of the French church there, in 
conjunction with those of Martineau, 
Columbine, Le Monnier, De la Have, 
etc. Solomon de Caus, the engineer, 
whose name is connected with the first 
invention of the steam-engine, spent 
several years as a refugee in England ; 



after which he proceeded to Germany in 
1613, and ultimately died in France, 
whither he returned in his old age. For 
notice of him, see p. 2S9. 

CAVALIER, John : the Cevennol 
leader, afterwards major-general in the 
British army. For notice, see p. 276. 

CHAIGNEAU, Louis, John, and 
Stephen : refugees from St. Sairenne, in 
the Charente, where the family held 
considerable landed estates. They 
settled in Dublin, and prospered. One 
of the sons of Louis sat for Gowram 
in the Irish Parliament ; another held 
a benefice in the church. John had 
two sons — Colonel William Chaigneau, 
and John, Treasurer of the Ordnance. 
The great-grandson of Stephen was 
called to the Irish bar in 1793, and 
eventually piuchased the estate of Ben- 
own, in county Westmeath. 

CHAMBERLAYNE, Peter, M.D. : 
a physician of Paris, who fled into Eng- 
land at the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
He was admitted a member of the col- 
lege of physicians, and obtained an 
extensive practice in London, where he 
died. 

CHAMFER: an eminent Protestant 
family, originally belonging to Avignon. 
Daniel Chamier, who was killed in 1621 
hi the defence of Montauban, then be- 
sieged by Louis XIII., was one of the 
ablest theologians of his time, and a 
leading man of his party. He drew up 
for Henry IV. the celebrated Edict of 
Nantes. Several of his descendants 
settled in England. One was minister 
of the French Church in Glass-House 
Street, London, and afterwards of the 
Artillery Church. His eldest son, also 
called Daniel, emigrated to Maryland, 
U.S., where he settled in 1753. A 
younger son, Anthony, a director of the 
French Hospital, sat for Tamworth in 
Parliament in 1772. See also Des 
Champs. 

CHAMPAGNE, Robillaed de : a 
noble family in Saintonge, several of 
whom took refuge in England and Ire- 
land. The children of Josias de Robil- 
lard, chevalier of Champagne, under 
charge of their mother, escaped from La 
Rochelle concealed in empty wine casks, 
and arrived safe at Plymouth. Their 
father went into Holland and took ser- 
vice with the Prince of Orange. He 
afterwards died at Belfast, on his way 



502 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. appendix. 



to join his regiment in Ireland. Madame 
de Champagne settled at Portarlington 
with her family. One of Champagne's 
sons, Josias, was an ensign in La Mel- 
onniere's regiment of French infantry, 
and fought at the Boyne. He after- 
wards became major of the 14th Foot. 
Several of his descendants have served 
with distinction in the army, the church, 
and the civil service ; while the daughters 
of the family have intermarried with 
various titled families in England and 
Ireland. 

CHAMPION : see Crespigny. 

CHARDEVENNE : a Protestant 
family belonging to Casteljaloux. The 
first eminent person of the name was 
Antoine, doctor of medicine, who after- 
wards became a famous preacher and 
pastor, first at Caumont, and afterwards 
at Marennes. At the Revocation, the 
members of his family became dis- 
persed. Some of them went to North 
America ; in 1724 we find Pierre (son 
of the pastor above named) a member of 
the French church at New York ; while 
others fled to England, and established 
themselves at Hungerford. 

CHARLOT, Charles, better known 
under the name of d'Argenteuil, was a 
Roman Catholic cure converted to Pro- 
testantism, who took refuge in England, 
and officiated as pastor in several of the 
London churches. In 1699, he was 
minister of the Tabernacle, with Pierre 
Rival and Csesar Pegorier for colleagues. 
He published several works through 
Duchemin, the refugee publisher. 

CHARPENTIER, of Ruffee, in An- 
goumois : a martyr in 1685 to the bru- 
tality of the dragoons of Louis XIV. 
To force him to sign his abjuration they 
made him drink from twenty-five to 
thirty glasses of water ; but this means 
failing, they next dropped into his eyes 
the hot tallow of a lighted candle. He 
died in great torture. His son John 
took refuge in England, and was min- 
ister of the Malthouse Church, Canter- 
bur v, in 1710. 

CHASTELET, Hippolyte : a monk 
of La Trappe, who left that monastery 
in 1672, and took refuge in England, 
Avhere he acquired great fame as a Pro- 
testant preacher, under the name of 
Lusancy. He officiated for a time as 
pastor of the church in the Savoy, and 
was afterwards appointed to the charge 



of the French church at Harwich. 
Lusancy wrote and published a life of 
Marshal Schomberg, together with other 
works, principally poetry. 

CHATELAIN, Henry : son of Za- 
chariah Chatelain, a manufacturer of 
gold and silver lace (see notice at p. 
309), who fled from Paris to Holland, 
and there introduced the manufacture. 
Zachariah had nine sons and two daugh- 
ters. Henry, the eldest son, was born 
at Paris in 1684. He was educated at 
Leyden, and eventually decided to enter 
the church. He came over to England 
in 1709, and was ordained by the Bishop 
of London. He became minister of the 
French church of Saint Martin Ongars 
in 1711, and latterly accepted the pas- 
torate of the church at the Hague, where 
he died in 1743. He was a most elo- 
quent preacher, as well as a vigorous 
writer. He wrote the life of Claude, as 
well as of Bernard, and a Avork On the 
Excellence of the Christian Religion, 
besides six volumes of sermons. 

CHENEVIX : a distinguished Lor- 
raine family, which became dispersed 
throughout Europe at the Revocation. 
The Beville branch of the family settled 
in Brandenburg, and the Eply branch in 
England. Philip Chenevix was minis- 
ter of the church of Limay near Mantes, 
from which place he fled to London. 
One of his sons entered the King's 
Guards, of which he became colonel. 
The son of this last was for thirty years 
bishop of Waterford. Another member 
of the family, Richard, was a distinguished 
chemist, member of the Royal Society 
in 1801, and author of many able works 
on science, including an Essay on Na- 
tional Character. For notice of Paul 
Chenevix of Metz, brother of the Rev. 
Philip Chenevix above named, see note 
to p. 186. 

CHERON, Louis : a painter and en- 
graver who took refuge in England at 
the Revocation, and died in London in 
1723. 

CHEVALIER, Antoine-Rodolphe : 
a zealous Huguenot, born at Mont- 
champs in 1507. "When a youth he was 
compelled to fly into England for life. 
He completed his studies at Oxford, and 
being recommended to the Duke of 
Somerset, he was selected by him to 
teach the Princess (afterwards Queen) 
Elizabeth the French language. Cheva- 



appendix. HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



503 



lier subsequently held the professorship 
of Hebrew at Cambridge, but resigned 
it in 1570 to return to France. He was 
again compelled to fly by the renewed 
persecution at the time of the Bartholo- 
mew massacre, and he died in exile at 
Guernsey in 1572. He was a volumin- 
ous author on classical subjects. During 
his short residence abroad, he left his 
son Samuel at Geneva, for the purpose 
of being educated for the church, under 
Theodore de Beza. On the revival of 
the persecutions in France, Samuel took 
refuge in England, was appointed minis- 
ter of the French church in London in 
1591, and afterwards of the Walloon 
church at Canterbury in 1595. Mr. 
Chevalier Cobbold, M.P., belongs to this 
family. 

CLAUDE, Jean-Jacques : a young 
man of remarkable talents, grandson of 
the celebrated French preacher at the 
Hague. He was appointed pastor of 
the Walloon church in Threadneedle 
Street in 1710, but died of small-pox a 
few years later, aged only twenty-eight. 

COLIGNON, Abraham de : minister 
of Mens. At the Kevocation he and 
several of his sons took refuge in Hesse, 
while Paul became minister of the Dutch 
church in Austin Friars, London. His 
son Charles became professor of anatomy 
and medicine at Cambridge, and was 
known as the author of several able 
works on those subjects. 

COLLOT DE L'ESCURY : a refugee 
officer from Noyon, who escaped from 
France through Switzerland into Hol- 
land at the Revocation, and joined the 
army of William of Orange. He was 
major in Schomberg's regiment at the 
Boyne. His eldest son David was a 
captain of dragoons ; another, Simeon, 
was colonel of an English regiment, both 
of whose sons were captains of foot. 
Their descendants still survive in Ire- 
land. 

COLOMIES, Jerome, the great pas- 
tor and preacher of Rochelle, belonged 
to a Bearnese family. His grandson, 
Paid, the celebrated author, came over 
to England in 1681, and was first ap- 
pointed reader in the French church of 
the Savoy. Sancroft, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, afterwards made him his 
librarian. Paul Colomies was the au- 
thor of numerous learned works, the 
titles of nineteen of which are given by 



Haag in La France Protestante. He 
died in London, 1692. 

CONAUT, John : son of a Protestant 
refugee from Normandy who had settled 
in Devonshire. He studied at Oxford, 
entered the church, and Avas appointed 
vicar of Yealmpton, Devon, in which 
office Cromwell continued him during 
the Commonwealth. In 1654 he was 
appointed professor of theology, and in 
1657 vice-chancellor of the University 
of Oxford. In 1676 he was archdeacon 
of Norwich, and in 1681 he was ap- 
pointed a prebendary of Worcester. He 
died in 1693. 

CONSTANT : a Protestant family of 
Artois. At the Revocation, several of 
them fled into Switzerland, others into 
Holland, and took service under the 
Prince of Orange. Samuel, known as 
Baron de Constant, served as adjutant- 
general under Lord Albemarle in 1704 ; 
and afterwards fought under Marl- 
borough in all the great battles of the 
period. His son David-Louis, an officer 
in the same service, was wounded at 
Fontenoy. Benjamin Constant, the 
celebrated French author, belonged to 
this family. 

CORCELLIS, Nicholas : son of 
Zeager Corcellis of Ruselier, in Flanders, 
who took refuge in England from the 
persecutions of the Duke of Alva. 
Nicholas became a prosperous London 
merchant. James was a physician in 
London, 1664. 

CORNAUD DE LA CROZE: alearned 
refugee, author of The Works of the 
Learned, The History of Learning 
and numerous other works. 

COSNE, Pierre de : a refugee 
gentleman from La Beauce, Orleans, 
who settled at Southampton. His son 
Ruvigny de Cosne entered the Cold- 
stream Guards, and rose to be lieutenant- 
colonel in the British army. He was 
afterwards secretary to the French em- 
bassy, and ambassador at the Spanish 
court. 

COSNE-CHAVERNEY, de : another 
branch of the same family. Captain de 
Cosne-Chavernay came over with the 
Prince of Orange in command of a com- 
pany of gentlemen volunteers. He was 
lieutenant-colonel of Belcastel's regiment 
at the taking of Athlone in 1691. 

COTTEREAU, N : a celebratod Pro- 
testant horticulturist, who fled into 



504 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



England at the Revocation, and was 
appointed one of the gardeners of Wil- 
liam III. Having gone into France to 
look after a manufactory of pipes which 
he had established at Rouen, he was de- 
tected encouraging the Protestants there 
to stand fast in the faith. He had also 
the imprudence to write something 
about Madame de Maintenon in a letter, 
which was construed as a libel. He was 
thereupon seized and thrown into the 
Bastile, where he lay for many years, 
during several of which he was insane. 
The converters offered him liberty if he 
would abjure his religion. At last he 
abjured ; but he was not released. " It 
was deemed just, as well as necessary, 
that Cottereau should remain in the 
Bastile and be forgotten there." He 
accordingly remained there a prisoner 
for eighteen years, until he died. 

COULAN, Anthony : a refugee pas- 
tor from the Cevennes. He was for 
some time minister of the Glasshouse 
Street French church in London. He 
died in 1694, 

COURTEEN, William : the son of 
a tailor at Menin in Flanders, a refugee 
in England from the persecutions of the 
Duke of Alva. He established himself 
in business, with his son Peter Boudeau, 
in Abchurch Lane, and is said to have 
owed his prosperity to the manufacture 
of French hoods. His son became Sir 
William Courteen, a leading merchant of 
the city of London. His descendants 
also married with the Bridgewater and 
other noble families. 

COUSIN, Jean : a refugee pastor 
from Caen, one of the first ministers of 
the Walloon church in London about 
the year 1562. He returned to France, 
but again fled back to England after the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew, and died 
n London. 

CRAMAHE : a noble family of La 
Rochelle. The three brothers Cramahe, 
De L'Isle, and Des Roches, made 
arrangements to escape into England at 
the Revocation. The tAvo former suc- 
ceeded, and settled in this country. 
Des Roches was less fortunate ; he was 
detected under the disguise in which he 
was about to fly ; was flogged, maltreat- 
ed, stripped of all the money he had, 
put in chains, and cast into a dungeon. 
After being transferred from one prison 
to another, and undergoing many cruel- 



ties, being found an obstinate heretic, 
he was, after twenty-seven months' im- 
prisonment, banished the kingdom. 

CRAMER : a refugee Protestant 
family of Strasburg, some of whom 
settled in Geneva, where Gabriel Cramer, 
a celebrated physician, became Dean of 
the College of Medicine in 1677. Jean- 
Louis Cramer held the rank of captain 
in the English army, and served with 
distinction in the Spanish campaign. 
When the French army occupied Geneva 
at the Revolution, Jean-Antoine, brother 
of the preceding, came over to England 
and settled. His second son, Jean- 
Antoine, was a professor at Oxford and 
Dean of Carlisle. He was the author 
of several geographical works. Another 
member of this family was Gabriel 
Cramer, of Geneva, the celebrated 
mathematician. 

CREGUT : a refugee pastor from 
Montelimar, who officiated as minister 
of the French church in Wheeler Street, 
and afterwards in that of La Nouvelle 
Patente, London. 

CRESPIGNY, Claude Champion 
de ; a landed proprietor in Normandy, 
who fled from France into England with 
his family at the Revocation. He was 
related by marriage to the Pierpoints, 
who hospitably received the fugitives. 
Two of his sons entered the army ; 
Gabriel was an officer in the Guards, 
and Thomas captain in Hotham's Dra- 
goons. The grandson of the latter had 
two sons: Philip Champion de Crespigny, 
M.P. for Aldbough, 1803; andSir Claude 
Champion de Crespigny, created Baro- 
net in 1805. 

CROMMELIN, Louis : royal super- 
intendent of the linen-manufacture in 
Ireland, to which office he was appointed 
by William III. For notice of him, see 
p. 360. 

CRUSO, John : a refugee from 
Hownescoat in Flanders, who settled in 
Norwich. His son Timothy became a 
prosperous merchant in London, and 
founded the present Norfolk family of 
the Crusos. 

DAILLON, James de : a member of 
the illustrious family of Du Lude. He 
entered the English Church, and held a 
benefice in Buckinghamshire toAvards the 
end of the 17th century; but having 
declared in favour of James II. he was 
deposed from his office in 1693, and 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



505 



died in Loudon in 1726. His brother 
Benjamin was also a refugee in England, 
and held the office of minister in the 
church of La Patente, which he helped 
to found. 

D'ALBIAC : this family is said to de- 
rive its name from Albi, the capital of the 
country of the Albigenses, which was de- 
stroyed in the religious crusade against 
tliat people in the thirteenth century. 
The D Albiacs fled from thence to Nismes, 
where they suffered heavily for their reli- 
gion, especially after the Revocation. Two 
youthful D' Albiacs were sent to England, 
having been smuggled out of the 
country in hampers. They both pros- 
pered and founded families. "We find 
the names of their descendants occurring 
amongst the directors of the French 
Hospital. The late Lieutenant-General 
Sir J. C. Dalbiac, M.P., was lineally 
descended from one of the sons, and his 
only daughter became Duchess of Rox- 
burghe by her marriage with the Duke 
hi 1S36. 

DALECHAMP, Caleb: a refugee 
from Sedan, who entered the English 
Church, and became rector of Ferriby in 
Lincobishire. 

DANSAYS, Francis : a French re- 
fugee at Rye in Sussex. William was a 
jurat of that town ; he died in 1787. 
The family is now represented by the 
Stonhams. 

D ARGENT or DARGAN : a refu- 
gee family from Sancerre, some of the 
members of which settled in England 
and Ireland at the Revocation. Two of 
them served as officers in William 
IIL's Guards. Two brothers were 
directors of the French Hospital — John 
in 1756, and James in 1762. 

D'ARGENTEUIL : see Cliarlot. 

DAVID : a Protestant family of 
Rochelle, many members of which fled 
from France, some into England, and 
others to the United States of America. 
One, John David, was a director of the 
French Hospital in London in 1750. 

D AUDE, Peter : a member of one of 
the best families of Maruejols in the 
Gevaudan. He came to England in 
16S0, and became a tutor in the Trevor 
family, after which he accepted a clerk- 
ship in the Exchequer, which he held 
for twenty-eight years. He was a very 
learned, but an exceedingly diffident and 
eccentric man. His nephew, akso named 



Peter, was a minister of one of the 
French churches in London. 

DE JEAN, Louis : descended from 
a French refugee, was colonel of the 
6th Dragoon Guards, and eventually 
lieutenant-general. 

DE LA CHEROIS : a noble family 
of Languedoc, seigneurs of Cherois, near 
Sens. Three brothers fled into Holland 
and took service under the Prince of 
Orange. Then- two sisters afterwards 
fled in disguise on horseback, accom- 
panied by a faithful page, travelling 
always by night and concealing them- 
selves in the woods during the day. 
The brothers followed the fortunes of 
William III. ; fought at the Boyne, 
where one of them was killed, and after- 
wards in the Low Countries. The two 
remaining brothers, Nicholas and Daniel, 
eventually settled at Lisburn in Ireland, 
where they married two daughters of 
Louis Crommelin. Daniel was appointed 
governor of Pondicherry in the East 
Indies. Nicholas reached the rank 
of lieutenant-colonel in the British 
army. Their descendants still exist in 
Ireland. 

DE LAINE, Peter : a French re- 
fugee, who fled into England before the 
Revocation, and obtained letters of 
denisation dated 1681. He was ap- 
pointed French tutor to the children of 
the Duke of York, afterwards James II. 

DE LA MOTHE : see Mothe. 

DELAUNE : a refugee family from 
Normandy, who took refuge in England 
as early as 1599, when a Delaune offi- 
ciated as minister of the Walloon Church 
in London. Another, in 1618, held the 
office of minister of the Walloon Church 
at Norwich. Thomas Delaune was a 
considerable writer on religious and con- 
troversial subjects. 

DE LOVAL, Vicomte : possessor of 
I large estates in Picardy, who, after 
| heavy persecution, fled at the Revoca- 
I tion, and took refuge in Ireland, settling 
at Portarlington. His son was an o ni- 
cer in the British army. 

DE LAVALADE: this family pos- 
sessed large estates in Languedoc. Seve- 
ral members of them succeeded in 
escaping into Holland, and afterwards 
proceeded to Ireland, settling in Lisburn. 
M. De Lavalade was forty years pastor 
of the French church there. 

DELEMAR, De la Mer, Delmer : 



506 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



a Protestant refugee family at Canter- 
bury, whose names are of frequent 
occurrence in the register of that church. 
Their descendants are numerous, and 
enjoy good positions in society. 

DELME, Philip : minister of the 
Walloon congregation, Canterbury ; 
"whose son Peter settled in London as a 
merchant ; and whose grandson, Sir 
Peter, ancestor of the present family of 
Delme Kadcliffe, was Lord Mayor of 
London in 1723. 

DE MOIVRE, Abraham, F.R.S. : 
for notice, see p. 294. 

DESAGULIERS, Dr. : for notice, 
see p. 292. 

DES CHAMPS, John : a native of 
Bergerac, belonging to an ancient family 
established in Perigord. At the Revo- 
cation he took refuge, first in Geneva, 
and then in Prussia. Of his sons, one 
became minister of the church at Berlin ; 
while- another came over to England and 
became minister of the church of the 
Savoy, in which office he died in 1767. 
The son of the latter, John Ezekiel, 
entered the civil service of the East 
India Company, and became member of 
Council of the Presidency of Madras. 
He ultimately took the name of Cham icr, 
having been left sole heir to Anthony 
Chamier. By his marriage with Georgi- 
ana Grace, daughter of Admiral Burnaby, 
he had a numeroiis family. One of his 
sons is Captain Frederick Chamier, the 
novelist and nautical annalist. 

DES MAISEAUX, Peter : a native 
of Auvergne, born in 1666 ; the son of 
a Protestant minister, who took refuge 
in England. Little is known of Des 
Maiseaux's personal history, beyond that 
he was a member of the Royal Society, 
a friend of Saint Evremond, and a volu- 
minous author. He died in 1745. 

DES ORMEAUX, also named Colin 
des Ormeaux : a Rochelle family. At 
the Revocation several members of it 
settled at Norwich. One Catherine 
Colin was married to Thomas le Che- 
valier in 1727. Gabriel Colin was 
minister of Thorpe-le-Soken from 1707 
to 1714. A member of the family, 
Jacques Louis des Ormeaux, was elected 
a director of the French Hospital in 
1798. 

DES VOEUX, Vinchon : second son 
of De Bacquencourt, president of the 
parliament of Rouen. He took refuge 



in Dublin, where he became minister of 
the French church. In conjunction 
with the Rev. Peter Droz, he com- 
menced, about 1742, the publication of 
the first literary journal which appeared 
in Ireland. He afterwards removed to 
Portarlington. The present head of the 
family is Sir C. Des Voeux, Bart. 

DEVAYNES, William, M.P. : de- 
scended from a Huguenot refugee. He 
was a director of the East India Com- 
pany, a director of the French Hospital, 
and was elected for Barnstaple in 1774. 

DE VEILLE, Hans : a refugee who 
entered the English Church, and was 
made library keeper at Lambeth by 
Archbishop Tillotson. His son Thomas 
entered the English army as a private, 
and was sent with his regiment to Por- 
tugal. There he rose by merit to the 
command of a troop of dragoons. On 
his return to London, he was appointed 
a London justice, an office then paid by 
fees ; and his conduct in the riots of 
1735 was so much approved, that he 
received the honour of knighthood. He 
was also colonel of the Westminster 
militia. 

DOLLOND, John : for notice, see 
p. 414. 

DRELINCOURT, Peter : son of 
Charles Drelincourt, one of the ablest 
preachers and writers among the French 
Protestants. He was educated at Ge- 
neva, and afterwards came to England, 
where he entered the English Church, 
and eventually became dean of Armagh. 

DU BOIS or DU BOUAYS : a Pro- 
testant family of Brittany, of whom 
many members came over to England 
and settled at an early period at Thor- 
ney, Canterbury, Norwich, and London. 
Others of the name came from French 
Flanders. 

DUBOUCHET: an illustrious Hu- 
guenot family of Poitou, several of 
whose members took refuge in England. 
One of them, Pierre, officiated as minis- 
ter of the French church at Plymouth 
between 1733 and 1737. 

DU BOULAY : a family descended 
from the Marquis d'Argencon de Boulay, 
a Huguenot refugee in Holland in 1685. 
His grandson was minister of the French 
church in Threadneedle Street, London. 
The family is now represented by Du 
Boulav, of Denhead Hall, Wiltshire. 

DUBOURDIEU : a noble Protestant 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



507 



family of Beam. Isaac was for some I 
time minister of the Savoy church, Lon- 
don. His son, John Arniand, after 
having been minister at Montpelier, took 
refuge in England, and also became one 
of the ministers of the church in the 
Savoy. His grandson was the last pastor 
of the French church at Lisburn, and 
afterwards rector of Annahilt in Ireland. 
For notice of the Dubourdieus, see p. 
310, and notes to pp. 317 and 365. 

DU BUISSON, Francis : a doctor 
of the Sorbonne. Becoming converted 
to Protestantism, he fled into England 
at the time of the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, and became minister of the 
French church at Rye. 

DU CAREL, Andrew-Coltee : a 
refugee who accompanied his parents 
from Caen into England, at the revival 
of religious persecution in France in 
1724. He studied at Eton and Oxford. 
In 1757 he was appointed archbishop's 
librarian at Lambeth, and in the follow- 
ing year he was sent to Canterbury, 
where he held an important appoint- 
ment in the record office. He was a 
man of great antiquarian learning, and 
published numerous works on classical 
antiquities. 

DU CROS, John : a refugee from 
Dauphin y. In 1 7 1 1 his son was minister 
of the Savoy. 

DU JON : a noble family of Berri, 
several members of whom took refuge in 
England. Francis, son of a refugee at 
Leyden, where he studied, was appointed 
librarian to the Earl of Arundel, and 
held the office for thirty years. He was 
one of the first to devote himself to the 
study of Anglo-Saxon, and published 
several works on the subject. 

DU MOULIN : an ancient and noble 
family of the Isle of France, that has 
furnished dignitaries to the Roman 
Church as well as produced many emi- 
nent Protestant writers. Charles Du 
Moulin, the eminent French juriscon- 
sult, declared himself a Protestant in 
1542. Pierre du Moulin belonged to 
another branch of the family. He was 
only four years old at the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, and was saved by 
an old servant of his father. In his 
youth he studied at Sedan, and after- 
wards at Oxford and Leyden. At the 
latter university he was appointed pro- 
fessor of philosophy when only in his 



twenty-fourth year. Grotius was among 
his pupils. Seven years later, he was 
" called" by the great Protestant church 
at Charenton near Paris, and accepted 
the invitation to be their minister. He 
officiated there for twenty-four years, 
during which he often incurred great 
peril, having had his house twice pil- 
laged by the popidace. At the outbreak 
of the persecution in the reign of Louis 
XIII. he accepted the invitation of 
James I. to settle in England, where he 
was received with every honour. The 
king appointed him a prebendary of 
Canterbury, and the university of Cam- 
bridge conferred upon him the degree 
of D.D. He afterwards returned to 
Paris, to assist in the conferences of the 
Protestant church, and died at Sedan at 
the age of ninety. His two sons, Peter 
and Louis, both settled in England. 
The former was preacher to the univer- 
sity of Oxford in the time of the Com- 
monwealth. In 1660, Charles II. ap- 
pointed him one of his chaplains as well 
as prebendary of Canterbury. Louis, 
on the other hand, who had officiated 
as Camden professor of history at Ox- 
ford during the Commonwealth, was 
turned out of his office on the Restora- 
tion, and retired to Westminster, where 
he continued for the rest of his life an 
extreme Presbyterian. Both brothers 
were voluminous authors. 

DUNCAN : a Scotch family natural- 
ised in France at the beginning of the 
17th century. Mark Duncan was Pro- 
testant professor of philosophy and 
Greek at Sauniur. One of his sons, 
Sainte-Helene, took refuge in London, 
where he died in 1697. Another de- 
scendant of the family, Daniel, was 
celebrated as a chemist and physician, 
and wrote several able works on his 
favourite subjects. His son Daniel was 
the last pastor of the French church at 
Bideford, where he died in 1761. He 
was also celebrated as a writer on re- 
ligious subjects. 

DUPIN, Paul : an eminent paper- 
manufacturer who established himself in 
England after the Revocation, and carried 
on a large paper-mill with great success. 

DU PLESSIS, Jacques : chaplain of 
the French Hospital in 1750. Another 
of the name, Francis, was minister of La 
Nouvelle Patente and Wheeler Street 
chapels, London — of the latter in 1720. 



508 



HUG UENO T REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



DU POET : a Protestant family of 
Poitou, several members of whom took 
refuge in England. One of them, 
James, was pastor of the French Wal- 
loon church in London in 1590. His 
son, of the same name, filled the office 
of professor of Greek at the university 
of Cambridge with great distinction. In 
1660, he was appointed dean of Peter- 
borough and chaplain to the king. He 
was the author of several learned works ; 
and died in 1679. 

DU PUY : a Protestant family of Lan- 
guedoc. At the Revocation, the brothers 
Philip and David entered the army of 
William of Orange. They were both 
officers in his guards, and were both 
killed at the Boyne. Another brother, 
Samuel, was also an officer in the British 
army, and served with distinction in the 
Low Countries. 

DU QUESNE, Abraham : second son 
of the celebrated admiral, a lieutenant 
in the French navy, settled in England 
after the Revocation, and died there. 
His son Thomas Roger was prebendary 
of Ely and vicar of East Tuddenham, 
Norfolk. Another branch of the family 
of Du Quesne or Du Cane, settled in 
England in the sixteenth century. One 
of their descendants was an alderman of 
London. From this branch the Du Canes 
of Essex are descended ; the head of 
whom is the present Charles Du Cane, 
M.P., of Braxted Park. 

DURAND : a noble family of Dau- 
phiny. Several ministers of the name 
officiated in French churches in England 
— one at Bristol and others in London. 
One Francis Durand, from Alengon, a 
convert from Romanism, was minister 
of the French church at Canterbury hi 
1767. 

DURANT : several members of this 
Huguenot family sat in Parliament. 
Thomas sat for St. Ives in 1768, and 
George for Evesham. 

DURAS, Baron. See Durfort. 

DURFEY, Thomas : born at Exeter 
about the middle of the seventeenth 
century. The son of a French refugee 
from Rochelle, well known as a song- 
writer and dramatic author. 

DURFORT DE DURAS : an ancient 
Protestant family of Guienne. Louis, 
Marquis of Blanquefort, came over to 
England in the reign of Charles II., and 
was well received by that monarch, who 



created him Baron de Duras and em- 
ployed him as ambassador-extraordinary 
at Paris. James II. created him, though 
a Protestant, Earl of Faversham, and 
gave him the command of the army 
which he sent against the Duke of Mon- 
mouth. He died in 1709. The French 
church which he founded at Faversham 
did not long survive him. 

DUROURE, Francis : scion of an 
ancient family in Languedoc. His two 
sons became officers in the English army. 
Scipio was lieutenant-colonel of the 12th 
Foot, and was killed at Fontenoy. Alex- 
ander was colonel of the 4th Foot, and 
rose to be lieutenant-general. 

DURY, Paul : an eminent officer of 
engineers, who entered the service of 
William III. , from which he passed into 
that of the Elector of Hesse. Two of 
his sons served with distinction in the 
English army ; the elder, of the regi- 
ment of La Melonniere, was killed at the 
Boyne. 

DU SOUL, Moses : a refugee from 
Tours, known in England as a translator 
and philologist about the beginning of 
the eighteenth century. 

DU TEMS, Louis : a refugee from 
Tours, historiographer to the king of 
England, member of the Royal Society 
and of the French Academy of Inscrip- 
tions. Having entered the English 
Church, he was presented with the 
living of Elsdon in Northumberland. 
He was the author of many well-known 
works. 

DUVAL. Many refugees from Rouen 
of this name settled in England, and 
several were ministers of French churches 
in London. Several have been governors 
of the French Hospital. 

EMERIS. A refugee family of this 
name fled out of France at the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, and purchased a 
small property in Norfolk, which de- 
scended from father to son, and is still in 
the possession of the family, at present 
represented by W. R. Emeris, Esq. of 
Louth, Lincolnshire. 

ESPAGNE, John d' : a refugee from 
Dauphiny, some time minister of 
Somerset House French church, in 
London ; the author of numerous re- 
ligious works. 

E VREMOND, Chaeles de St. Dents, 
Seigneur de Ste. Evremond : a refugee 
gentleman of wit and bravery, who served 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



509 



■with distinction under Tnrenne and 
Conde. His satiric humour lost him 
the friendship of his patrons, and pro- 
voked the emnity of Louis XIV., who 
ordered his arrest. Having received 
timely notice, Evremond fled first into 
Germany and Holland, and afterwards 
into England, where he became a great 
-favourite with Charles II., who gave 
him a pension. In 1678, an order in 
Council was passed directing returns to 
be made of foreigners then in England, 
and amongst them appears the follow- 
ing, doubtless that of our French seign- 
eur :— " Nov. 23, 1678. Ste Evremond, 
chasse de France il y a long temps, est 
venu d'abord en Angleterre, de la il est 
alle en Flandre, de Flandre en Alle- 
magne, d'Allemagne en Hollande, de 
Hollande il est revenu en Angleterre, ou 
il est presentement, ne pouvant retourner 
en son pais ; il n'a qu'un valet nomme 
Gaspare! Girrard, flammand de nation. 
Je suis loge dans St. Albans Street au 
coin. — Sr Evremond." — [State Papers, 
Domestic, various, No. 694.] Ste. Evre- 
mond was not a Protestant, nor would 
he be a Catholic. Indeed, he seems to 
have been indifferent to religion. His 
letters are among the most brilliant 
specimens of that style of composition 
in which the French so much excel ; but 
his other works are almost forgotten. 
Des Maiseaux, another refugee, published 
them in three vols, quarto in 1705 ; 
afterwards translating the whole into 
English. 

EYNARD : a refugee family of Dau- 
phiny. Anthony entered the British 
army, and served with distinction, dying 
in 1739. His brother Simon began 
business in London, and acquired a con- 
siderable fortune by his industry. A 
sister, Louise, married the refugee 
Gideon Ageron, who also settled in Eng- 
land. 

FARGUES, Jacques de : a wealthy 
apothecary, belonging to one of the best 
families of Montpelier. In 1569, his 
house was pillaged by the populace, 
while he himself was condemned to 
- death because of his religion, and 
hanged. His family fled to England, 
where their descendants still exist. 

FLEURY, Louis : protestant pastor 
of Tours, who fled into England in 1683. 
His son, Philip Amauret, went over to 
Ireland as a Protestant minister, and 



settled there. His son, grandson of the 
refugee, becaine vicar-choral of Lismore ; 
and the great-grandson of the refugee, 
George Lewis Fleury, became arch- 
deacon of Waterford. 

FONNEREAU. Three members of 
this family, descended from a Huguenot 
refugee — Zachary Philip, Thomas, and 
Martin — sat in Parliament successively 
for Aldborogh in 1768, 1773, and 1774. 

FONTAINE, James, M.A. and J.P. : 
for notice of, see p. 367. 

FORRESTIER, or Forrester. There 
were several refugees of this name in 
England. Peter Forrester was minister 
of the French church, La Nouvelle 
Patente, in 1708. Paul was minister 
of the French church at Canterbury ; 
and another was minister of that at 
Dartmouth. Alexander was a director 
of the French Hospital in 1735 ; and 
James was a captain in the British 
arrny. 

FORET, Marquis de la : a major- 
general in the British army, who seiwed 
in the Irish campaign of 1699. 

FOURDRINIER, Henry: the inven- 
tor of the paper-making machine. He 
was descended from one of the numerous 
industrial families of the north of 
France who fled into Holland at the Re- 
vocation. From Holland, Fourdrinier's 
father passed into England about the 
middle of the eighteenth century, and 
established a paper-manufactory. The 
first idea of the paper-making machine 
belonged to France, but Fourdrinier 
fully developed it, and embodied it in a 
working plan. He laboured at his in- 
vention for seven years, during which 
he was assisted by his brother Sealy and 
John Gamble. It was -perfected in 
1809. 

GAGNIER, John : a celebrated Ori- 
entalist scholar, who, becoming convert- 
ed to Protestantism, fled from France 
into England. The Bishop of Worces- 
ter appointed him his chaplain. In 
1715, he was appointed professor of 
Oriental languages at Oxford. His son 
took the degree of M.A., and was ap- 
pointed rector of Stranton in the 
diocese of Durham. 

GAL WAY, Earl of : see pp. 269, 
382. 

GAMBIER : a French refugee family 
settled at Canterbury, the name very 
frequently occurring in the registers of 



510 



HUGUENOT REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



the French church there. James Gam- 
bier, born 1692, became distinguished 
as a barrister : he was a director of the 
French Hospital in 1729. He had two 
sons, James and John. The former rose 
to be a vice-admiral, the second became 
governor of the Bahama Islands, where 
his son James, afterwards Lord Gam- 
bier, was born, 1756. He early entered 
the royal navy, and rose successively 
to the ranks of post-captain, vice-ad- 
miral, and admiral. He was created a 
peer for his services in 1807. His elder 
brother Samuel was a commissioner of 
the navy ; and other members of the 
family held high rank in the same 
service. 

GARENCIERES, Theophilus de : a 
doctor of medicine, native of Caen, who 
came over to England as physician to 
the French ambassador, and embraced 
Protestantism. He was the author of 
several medical works. 

GARRET, Mark : afterwards called 
Gerrard, the portrait-painter, a refugee 
from Bruges in Flanders, from whence 
he was driven over into England by the 
religious persecutions in the Low Coun- 
tries. He was king's painter in 1618. 

GARRIGUE : see Bouffard. 

GASTIGNY : founder of the French 
Hospital hi London. For notice, see p. 
354. 

GAUSS EN : there were several 
branches of this distinguished Protestant 
family in France. Haag mentions those 
of Sauniur, Burgundy, Guienne, and 
Languedoc. David Gaussen, who took 
refuge in Ireland in 1685, belonged 
to the Guienne branch. His descend- 
ants still flourish at Antrim, Belfast, 
and Dublin. The Gaussens who settled 
in England were from Languedoc. 
John Gaussen fled to Geneva at the 
Revocation. Of his sons, Peter and 
Francis came to England, where we find 
the former a director of the French 
Hospital in 1741, treasurer in 1745, 
and sub-governor in 1756. A nephew of 
these two brothers, named Peter, joined 
them in 1739, in his sixteenth year. 
He rose to eminence as a merchant ; be- 
came governor of the Bank of England, 
and a director of the East India Com- 
pany. By his marriage with Miss 
Bosanquet, he had a family of sons and 
daughters, amongst whom may be 
mentioned Samuel-Robert, colonel in J 



the army, High Sheriff of Hertford, and 
Member of Parliament. Like other 
members of his family, he also held the 
office of director of the French Hospi- 
tal. The Gaussens are still honourably 
known in London life. 

GAUTIER, N : a physician of Niort, 
who took refuge in England at the Re- 
vocation. He was the author of several 
religious books. 

GENESTE, Lours : the owner of a 
large estate in Guienne, which he for- 
feited by adhering to the Protestant 
religion. He first fled into Holland and 
took service under the Prince of Orange, 
whom he accompanied into England and 
Ireland, and fought hi the battle of the 
Boyne in the regiment of Lord Lifford. 
After the pacification of Ireland, Geneste 
settled at Lisburn, and left behind him 
two sons and a daughter, among whose 
descendants may be particularised the 
names of Hugh Stowell and Geneste, 
well known in the Christian world. 

GEORGES, Paul. Two refugees of 
this name Avere ministers of the French 
church at Canterbury. One of them, 
from Chartres, was minister in 1630 
The other, a native of Picardy, died in 
1689, after a ministry of 42 years. 

GERVAISE, Louis : a large hosiery 
merchant at Paris, an elder of the 
Protestant church there. At the Revoca- 
tion of the Edict, though seventy years 
of age, he was incarcerated in the Abbey 
of Gannat, from which he was transferred 
to that of Saint Magloire, then to the 
Oratory, and after that to the convent 
of Lagny and the castie of Angouleme. 
All methods of converting him having 
failed, he was finally banished from 
France in 1688, when he took refuge in 
London with his brother and his son, 
who had succeeded in escaping before 
him. 

GIBERT, Etienne : one of the last 
refugees from France for conscience' sake. 
He laboured for some time as a pastor 
of the "Church in the Desert;" but 
the Bishop of Saintes having planned his 
capture, he fled into Switzerland. After- 
wards, in 1763, we find him attending 
a secret synod in France as deputy of 
Saintonge ; but at length, in 1771, he 
fled into England. He was minister of 
the French church of La Patente in Lon- 
don in 1776, and afterwards of the 
Chapel Royal of St. James. He was 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



511 



finally presented with the rectory of St. 
Andrews in the island of Guernsey, where 
he died in 1817. 

GOSSET : a Huguenot family who 
took refuge in Jersey, and afterwards in 
London. Isaac Gosset invented a com- 
position of wax, in which he modelled 
portraits in an exquisite manner. His 
son, the Eev. Isaac Gosset, D.D., F.R.S., 
was eminent as a preacher, biblical critic, 
and book-collector. He died in 1812. 

GOULARD, James, Marquis of Ver- 
vans : a Huguenot refugee in England, 
who died there in 1700. The mar- 
chioness, his wife, was apprehended 
when about to set out to join her hus- 
band. She was shut up in the convent 
of the Ursulines at Angouleme, from 
which she was successively transferred 
to the Abbey of Puyberlan in Poitou, 
to the Abbey of the Trinity at Poitiers, 
and finally to Port-Royal. Her courage 
at length succumbed and she conformed, 
thereby securing possession of the estates 
of her husband. 

GOYER, Peter : a refugee manu- 
facturer from Picardy, who settled at 
Lisburn in Ireland, For notice of him, 
see p. 365. 

GRAVEROL, John : born at Nismes, 
1647, of a famous Protestant family. 
He early entered the ministry, and be- 
came pastor of a church at. Lyons. He 
fled from France at the Revocation, and 
took refuge in London. He was pastor 
of the French churches in Swallow Street 
and the Quarre. Graverol was a volu- 
minous author. 

GROSTETE, Claude : a refugee pas- 
tor in London, minister of the French 
church in the Savoy. 

GROTE or DE GROOT : for notice 
of family, see p. 394. 

GUALY: a Protestant family of 
Rouergue. Peter, son of the Sieur de 
la Gineste, fled into England at the Re- 
vocation, with his wife and three child- 
ren — Paul, Francis, and Margaret. Paul 
entered the English army, and died a 
major-general. Francis also entered the 
army, and eventually settled at Dublin, 
where his descendants survive. 

GUERIN : a French refugee family 
long settled at Rye, now represented by 
the Crofts. 

GUIDE, Philip : a French physician 
of Paris, a native of Chalons-sur-Saone, 
who took refuge in London at the Re- 



vocation. He was the author of several 
medical works. 

GUILLEMARD, John : a refugee 
in London from Champdeniers, where 
he had been minister. His descendants 
have been directors of the French Hos- 
pital at different times. 

GUILLOT. Several members of this 
family were officers in the navy of Louis 
XIV. They emigrated to Holland at 
the Revocation, and were presented by 
the Prince of Orange with commissions 
in his navy. Their descendants settled 
in Lisburn in Ireland. Others of the 
same name — Guillot and Gillett — of like 
French extraction, settled in England, 
where their descendants are still to be 
found at Birmingham and Sheffield, as 
well as at Glastonbury, Exeter, and Ban- 
bury. 

GUYON DE GEIS, William de : 
son of the Sieur de Pampelona, a Pro- 
testant, fled into Holland at the Revo- 
cation. He took service under William 
of Orange, and saw much service in the 
campaigns in Piedmont and Germany, 
where he lost an arm. William III. 
gave him a retiring pension, when he 
settled at Portarlington, and died there 
in 1740. Several of his descendants 
have been officers in the English army. 
The last, Count Guy on, entered the 
Austrian service, and distinguished him- 
self in the Hungarian rebellion of 1848. 

HARENC : a refugee family from 
the south of France. Benjamin was a 
director of the French Hospital in 1765. 
He bought the estate of Footscray, Kent ; 
his son married the daughter of Joseph 
Berens, Esq., and was a prominent 
county magistrate in Kent. 

HAZARD or HASAERT, Peter : a 
refugee in England from the persecu- 
tions in the Low Countries under the 
Duchess of Parma. Returning on a 
visit to his native land, he was seized 
and burnt alive in 1568. His descend- 
ants still survive in England and Ireland 
under the name of Hassard. 

HERAULT, Louis : a refugee pastor 
from Normandy, who obtained a bene- 
fice in the English Church in the reign 
of Charles I. But he was so zealous a 
royalist that he was forced to fly again 
into France, from which, however, he 
returned at the Restoration, and ob- 
tained a canonry at Canterbury, which 
he enjoyed until his death. 



512 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



HEKVAKT, Philibert, Baron de 
Huningue : a refugee of high character 
and station. In 1690 William III. ap- 
pointed him his ambassador at Geneva. 
He afterwards settled at Southampton. 
He became governor of the French 
Hospital in 1720, to which he gave a 
sum of £4000, dying in the following- 
year. 

HIPPOLITE, Ste. : see Montolieu. 

HOUBLON, Peter : a refugee from 
Flanders because of his religion, who 
settled in England about the year 1568. 
His son J ohn became an eminent mer- 
chant in London, his grandson James 
being the father of the Royal Exchange. 
Two sons of the latter, Sir James and 
Sir J ohn, were aldermen of London ; 
while the former represented the city 
in Parliament in 1698, the latter served 
it as Lord Mayor in 1695. Sir John 
was the first governor of the Bank of 
England ; he was also a commissioner 
of the admiralty. Another brother, Ab- 
raham, was also a director and governor 
of the bank. His son, Sir Richard, left 
an only daughter who married Henry 
Temple, created Lord Palmerston, 1722, 
from whom the late Lord Palmerston 
was lineally descended. 

HUDEL or UDEL : pastor of " Les 
Grecs" French church, London, the 
eldest son of a zealous Huguenot, con- 
fined in prison for a quarter of a cen- 
tury, and who was only released at the 
death of Louis XIV. 

HUGESSEN, James : a refugee from 
Dunkirk, who settled at Dover. The 
family is now represented by E. Knatch- 
bull Hugessen, M.P. For notice, see 
p. 392. 

JANSEN, Theodore, youngest son 
of the Baron de Heez. The latter was 
a victim to the cruelty of the Duke of 
Alva in the Netherlands, and suffered 
death at the hands of the public execu- 
tioner. Theodore took refuge in France, 
from whence the family fled into Eng- 
land. His grandson, also named Theo- 
dore, was knighted by William III., and 
created a baronet by Queen Anne. The 
family were highly distinguished as mer- 
chants and bankers in London. Three 
of Sir Theodore's sons were baronets, 
two were members of Parliament, and 
one, Sir Stephen Theodore, was Lord 
Mayor of London in 1755. 

JUSTEL, Henry : a great Pro- 



testant scholar, formerly secretary to 
Louis XIV., but a fugitive at the Revo- 
cation. On his arrival in England in 
1684, the king appointed him royal 
librarian. He was the author of nume- 
rous works. 

JORTIN, Rene : a refugee from Brit- 
tany. For notice of the family, see 
p. 407. 

LABOUCHERE : for notice of, see p. 
400. 

LA CONDAMINE : an ancient and 
noble family belonging to the neighbour- 
hood of Nismes. Andre, the elder, was 
a Protestant, and held to his religion ; 
Charles Antoine abjured, and obtained 
possession of the family estate. Andre 
fled with his family, travelling by night 
only, — the two youngest children swung 
in baskets across a horse or mule. They 
succeeded in reaching the port of St. 
Malo, and crossed to Guernsey. The 
boy who escaped in the basket founded 
a family of British subjects. His son 
John became king's comptroller of 
Guernsey, and colonel of the Guernsey 
militia ; and his descendants still survive 
in England and Scotland. 

LALO : of the house of De Lalo in 
Dauphiny, a brigadier in the British 
army, killed at the battle of Malplaquet. 

LA MELONNIERE, Isaac de Mon- 
ceau, Sieur de : a lieutenant-colonel in 
the French army, who fled from France 
at the Revocation, and joined the army 
of the Prince of Orange. He raised the 
regiment called after him "Lamel- 
loniere's Foot." He served throughout 
the campaigns in Ireland and Flanders, 
and was raised to the rank of major- 
general. Several of his descendants have 
been distinguished officers in the British 
army. 

LA MOTTE, Francis : a refugee 
from Ypres in Flanders, who settled at 
Colchester as a manufacturer of bays 
and sayes. His son John became an 
eminent and wealthy merchant of Lon- 
don, of which he was an alderman. 

L' ANGLE, De : for notice of, see p. 
307. 

LA PIERRE : a Huguenot family of 
Lyons. Marc-Conrad was a magistrate, 
and councillor to the Parliament at 
Grenoble — a man highly esteemed for 
his learning and integrity. He left 
France at the Revocation, and settled in 
England. One of his sons was the 



appendix. HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



513 



minister of Spring Gardens French 
church in 1724 ; and Pierre de la 
Pierre was a director of the French 
Hospital in 1740. 

LA PILONNIERE : a Jesuit con- 
verted to Protestantism, who took re- 
fuge in England about 1716. He was 
the author of several works relating to 
his conversion, and also on English 
history. 

LA PBJ.MAUDAYE : a great Pro- 
testant family of Anjou. Several of 
them took refuge in England. In 1740 
Pierre de la Primaudaye was a governor 
of the French Hospital, and others of the 
same name afterwards held that office. 

LA ROCHE : a refugee from Bor- 
deaux, originally named Crothaire, 
whose son became M.P. for Bodmin in 
1727. His grandson, Sir James Laroche, 
Bai"t. , also sat for the same borough in 
1768. 

LAROCHEFOUCAULD (Frederick 
Charles de), Count de Roye : an able 
officer of Louis XIV., field-marshal 
under Turenne, who served in the great 
campaigns between 1672 and 1683. He 
left France at the Revocation, first en- 
tering the Danish service, in which he 
held the post of grand-marshal. He 
afterwards settled in England. He died 
at Bath in 1690. His son Frederick- 
William was a colonel of one of the six 
French regiments sent to Portugal under 
Schomberg. He was promoted to the 
rank of major-general, and was raised to 
the peerage (for life) under the title of 
Earl of Lifford in Ireland. 

LAROCHEFOUCAULD, Francis 
de : son of the Baron de Montendre; 
he escaped from the abbey of the Canons 
of Saint Victor, where he had been shut 
up for " conversion," and fled to England. 
He entered the English army, served in 
Ireland, where he was master-general of 
artillery, and rose to the rank of field- 
marshal. 

LA ROCHE-CUILHEM, Melle de : 
a voluminous writer of romances of the 
Scnderi school, and a Protestant, who 
first took refuge in Holland, and after- 
wards settled in England about 1697, 
though his works continued to be pub- 
lished abroad, mostly in Amsterdam. 

LARPENT, John de : a refugee from 
Caen in Normandy, who fled into Eng- 
land at the Revocation. His son and 
grandson were employed in the Foreign 

2 



Office. The two sons of the latter were 
F. S. Larpent, judge advocate-general in 
Spain under the Duke of Wellington and 
Sir George Gerard De Hochepied Lar- 
pent, Bart. 

LA TOMBE, Thomas : a Protestant 
refugee from Turcoigne, in the Low 
Countries, who settled at Norwich about 
1558. His son, of the same name, was 
a thriving merchant in London in 1634. 

LA TOUCHE: a noble Protestant 
family of the Blesois, between Blois and 
Orleans, where they possessed consider- 
able estates. At the Revocation, David 
Digues de la Touche fled into Holland 
and joined the army of the Prince of 
Orange. He served in the Irish cam- 
paigns, afterwards settling in Dublin, 
where he founded the well-known bank 
which still exists. His sons David and 
James founded good families in Ireland. 
From them are descended the families 
of La Touche, of Marlay, of Harristown, 
of Sans-Souci, and of Bellevue. Many 
members of the family have sat in Par- 
liament, and have intermarried with the 
nobility. — N. Latouche, a refugee in 
London, was the author of an excellent 
French grammar. 

LA TRANCHE, Frederick de : 
a Huguenot gentleman, who took refuge 
in England shortly after the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew. He first settled in 
Northumberland, from whence the family 
afterwards removed to Ireland, and 
founded the French family, the head of 
which is the Earl of Clancarty. Many 
high dignitaries of the church, and offi- 
cers in the army and civil service, have 
belonged to this family. The present 
Archbishop of Dublin is a Trench as 
well as a Chenevix (which see), thus being 
doubly a Huguenot by his descent. The 
Power-Keatings are a branch of the 
Trench family. The Earl of Ashtoun is 
the head of another branch. 

LA TREMOUILLE, Charlotte de : 
wife of James Stanley, Earl of Derby. 
The Countess was a Protestant — the 
daughter of Claude de la Tremouille 
and his wife the Princess of Orange. 
Sir Walter Scott incorrectly makes the 
Countess to have been a Roman Catholic. 

LAVAL, Etlenne-Abel : author of 
a History of the Reformation and of 
the Reformed Churches of France, and 
minister of the French Church in Castle 
Street, London, about the year 1730. 

L 



514 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



LA VALLADE : pastor of the French 
church at Lisburn, in Ireland, during 
forty years. He left an only daughter, 
who married, in 1737, George Eussell, 
Esq. of Lisburn, whose descendants 
survive. 

LAYAED, originally Lajard : a re- 
fugee family from Montpelier. Antoine 
de Lajard was controller-general of the 
king's farms, and at his death in 1681, 
his family, being Protestants, fled from 
France into England. Pierre Layard 
became a major in the English army. 
His son Daniel-Peter was a celebrated 
doctor, and held the appointment of 
physician to the Dowager Princess of 
Wales. He was the author of numerous 
works on medicine ; amongst others, of 
a treatise on the cattle distemper, which 
originally appeared in the Philosophical 
Transactions, and has since been fre- 
quently reprinted. The doctor had three 
sons — Charles-Peter, afterwards prebend- 
ary of Worcester and dean of Bristol ; 
Anthony-Louis and John-Thomas, who 
both entered the army, and rose the one to 
the rank of general, and the other to that 
of lieutenant-general. Austin Layard, 
M.P., so well known for his exploration 
of the ruins of Nineveh, is grandson of 
the above dean of Bristol. Two cousins 
are in the church. The head of the 
family is BrownloAV Villiers Layard, 
Esq. of Riversdale, near Dublin. 

LE COURRAYER, Pierre-Fran- 
cois : a canon of St. Genevieve at Paris, 
afterwards canon of Oxford. He was a 
very learned man, and a voluminous 
author. Having maintained as a Roman 
Catholic the validity of ordination by 
the bishops of the Anglican Church 
because of their unbroken succession 
from the apostles, he was denounced by 
his own church as a heretic, and excom- 
municated. In 1728, Le Courrayer 
took refuge in England, and was cordi- 
ally welcomed by Wake, then Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. The university of 
Oxford conferred on him the degree of 
D.D. Although he officiated as canon 
of Oxford, he avowed to the last that he 
had not changed his religion ; and that 
it was the Roman Catholic Church, and 
not he, that was in fault, in having 
departed from the doctrines and prac- 
tices of the early church. Le Courrayer 
died in London in 1776. 

LE FANU : a Norman Protestant 



family. Etienne Le Fanu of Caen 
having, in 1657, married a lady who 
professed the Roman Catholic religion, 
her relatives claimed to have her child- 
ren brought up in the same religion. Le 
Fanu nevertheless had three of them 
baptized by Protestant ministers. The 
fourth was seized and baptized by the 
Roman Catholic vicar. At the mother's 
death the maternal uncle of the children 
claimed to bring them up, and to set 
aside their father, because of his being 
a Protestant ; and the magistrates of 
Caen ordered Le Fanu to give up the 
children accordingly. He appealed to 
the parliament of Rouen, in 1671, and 
they confirmed the decision of the magis- 
trates. Le Fanu refused to give up his 
children, and was consequently cast into 
prison, where he lay for three years. 
He eventually succeeded in making his 
escape into England, and eventually 
settled in Ireland, where his descendants 
still survive. 

LE FEVRE. Many refugees of this 
name settled in England. The Lefevres 
of Anjou were • celebrated as chemists 
and physicians. Nicholas, physician to 
Louis XIV., and demonstrator of che- 
mistry at the Jardin des Plantes, was 
invited over to England by Charles II., 
and made physician and chemist to the 
king in 1660. Sebastian Lefevre, M.D., 
of Anjou, was admitted licentiate of the 
London College of Physicians in 1684. 
A branch of the family settled in Spital- 
fields, where they long carried on the 
silk-manufacture. From this branch the 
present Lord Eversley is descended. 
For further notice, see p. 400. 

LEFROY, Anthony : a native of 
Cambray, who took refuge in England 
from the persecutions in the Low Coun- 
tries about the year 1579, and settled at 
Canterbury, where his descendants fol- 
lowed the business of silk-dying for 
about 150 years, until the trade was 
removed to Spitalfields. A descendant 
of the family, also called Anthony, was 
a merchant of Leghorn, and died in 
1779. From him the Irish family of 
the name is descended. This Anthony 
was a great antiquary, his collection of 
6600 coins being one of the finest ever 
made by a private person. He was an 
intimate friend of Thomas Hollis, and is 
frequently mentioned in his memoirs. 
Colonel Anthony Lefroy of Limerick 



appendix. HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



515 



represented the family during the latter 
half of last century. His son, the Eight 
Hon. Thomas Lefroy, Chief-Justice of 
Ireland, recently retired from the 
Bench. Anthony Lefroy, M.P., and 
Brigade-General Lefroy, R.A., are mem- 
bers of the same family. 

LE GOULON : a pupil of Vauban, 
and a refugee at the Revocation ; general 
of artillery in the army of William III. 
He served with distinction in Ireland, 
Germany, and Italy, dying abroad. 

LE MOINE, Abraham : son of a 
refugee from Caen. He was chaplain to 
the Duke of Portland and rector of 
Eversley, Wilts, the author of numerous 
works. He died in 1760. 

L'ESCURY : see Collot. 

LESTANG : a Protestant family of 
Poitou, one of whom acted as aide-de- 
camp to the Prince of Orange on his 
invasion of England. Another, Louis 
de Lestang, settled at Canterbury with 
his family. 

LE SUEUR : the refugee sculptor 
who executed the fine bronze equestrian 
statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross. 
Another work of his, still preserved, is 
the bronze statue of the Earl of Pem- 
broke in the picture-gallery at Oxford. 
The statue of Charles was sold by the 
Parliament for old metal, when it was 
purchased by Jean Rivet, supposed to be 
another refugee, and preserved by him 
until after the Restoration. — A refugee 
(named Le Sueur) was minister of the 
French church at Canterbury. 

LE THIEULLIER, John: a Pro- 
testant refugee from Valenciennes. His 
grandson was a celebrated London mer- 
chant, knighted in 1687. 

LE VASSOR, Michael : a refugee 
from Orleans, who entered the English 
church, and held a benefice in the county 
of Northampton, where he died. He 
was the author of several works, amongst 
others of a History of Louis XIII., 
which gave great offence to Louis XIV. 

LIGONNIER : a Protestant family 
of Castres. Jean Louis was a celebrated 
general in the English service ; he was 
created Lord Ligonnier and Baron Innis- 
killin. During his life he was engaged 
in nineteen pitched battles and twenty- 
three sieges, without ever having received 
a wound. One of his brothers, Antoine, 
was a major in the English army ; and 
another, who was raised to the rank of 



brigadier, was mortally wounded at the 
battle of Falkirk. For further notice of 
Lord Ligonnier, see p. 284. 

LOGIER, Jean-Bernard : a refugee 
musician, inventor of the method of 
musical notation which bears his name ; 
settled as a teacher of music at Dublin, 
where he died. 

LOMBART, Pierre : a celebrated 
French engraver, who took refuge in 
England in the reign of Charles I., and 
remained there until the early period of 
the Restoration. During that time he 
produced a large number of highly- 
esteemed engravings. He died at Paris, 
and was interred in the Protestant 
cemetery at Charenton a few years be- 
fore the Revocation. 

LUARD, Robert Abraham : a Hu- 
guent refugee from Caen, who settled in 
London. His son, Peter Abraham, 
became a great Hamburg merchant. 
George Augustus Luard, Esq. of Bly- 
borough Hall, is the present head of 
the family, to which Major Luard, of 
the Mote, Tunbridge, also belongs. 

MAITTAIRE, Michael : a celebrated 
philologist, linguist, and bibliographer, 
one of the masters of Westminster 
School at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. He was an able writer, prin- 
cipally on classical and religious sub- 
jects. Haag gives a list of sixteen of 
his works. 

MAJENDIE : several refugees from 
Beam of this name fled into England at 
the Revocation. One of them became 
pastor of the French church at Exeter. 
His son Jean-Jacques Majendie, D. D., 
was pastor of the French church in St. 
Martin's Lane, and afterwards of the 
Savoy. The son of this last became 
Bishop of Bangor, and afterwards of 
Chester. 

MANGIN : several refugees of this 
name from Metz settled in Ireland. 
Paul became established at Lisburn, 
where he married Madelaine, the 
daughter of Louis Crommelin. 

MARCET: a refugee family from 
Meaux, originally settled at Geneva, 
from whence Alexander came over to 
London about the end of last century, 
and settled as a physician. He was one 
of the founders of the Medico-Chirurgical 
Society, physician to Guy's Hospital, 
and the author of many valuable works 
on medicine and chemistry. Mrs. Marcet 



516 



HUG UENO T REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



Avas also the author of many esteemed 
works on political economy and natural 
history. 

MARIE, Jean : minister of the Pro- 
testant church at Lion-sur-Mer, who 
took refuge in England after the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew, and became 
pastor of the French church at Norwich. 
His son Nathaniel was minister of the 
French church in London. 

MARION, Elie : a refugee from the 
Cevennes. He joined his friend Cava- 
lier in England. Francis Marion, the 
celebrated general in the American War 
of Independence, is said to have been 
one of his descendants. 

MARTINEAU, Gaston : a surgeon of 
Dieppe, who fled into England at the 
Revocation, and settled at Norwich. 
His son David was also a skilful surgeon. 
Many of their descendants still exist, 
and some of them are highly distin- 
guished in modern English literature. 

MASERES, Francis : a celebrated 
judge and mathematician. At the Re- 
vocation, the grandfather of Maseres 
escaped into Holland, took service in 
the army of William of Orange, and 
came over to England in the regiment of 
Schomberg, in which he served as a 
lieutenant. He was afterwards employed 
in Portugal, where he rose to the rank 
of colonel. His son studied medicine at 
Cambridge, took his degree of doctor, 
and practised in London. Francis 
Maseres, the grandson of the refugee, 
also studied at Cambridge ; and after 
distinguishing himself in the mathe- 
matics, he embraced the profession of 
the law. Besides his eminence as a 
judge, he was an able and industrious 
author. Haag gives the titles of fifteen 
books published by him on different 
subjects. For further notice, see p. 410. 

MASSUE, Henri de, Marquis de Ru- 
vigny : for notice of, see pp. 259, 899 
(note) ; and of his son Henry, Earl of Gal- 
way, pp. 269, 382. 

MATHY, Matthew : a celebrated 
physician and author. After a residence 
in Holland, he settled in England about 
the middle of last century. He was 
admitted a fellow of the Royal Society, 
of which he was appointed secretary in 
1758. He was afterwards appointed 
librarian of the British Museum, in 
which office he was succeeded by his son. 

MATURIN, Gabriel : a refugee 



pastor who escaped from France after 
having been shut up in the Bastile for 
twenty-six years. He settled in Ireland, 
where he arrived a cripple. His son 
Peter became dean of Killala, and his 
grandson dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. 
From him descended the Rev. C. Ma- 
turin, senior fellow, Trinity College, 
Dublin, rector of Fanet ; the Rev. C. R. 
Maturin, an eloquent preacher, author 
of Bertram; and Gabriel Maturin, Esq., 
Washington. 

MAUDUIT, Isaac : descended from 
a Norman refugee settled at Exeter as 
a merchant. Isaac was a dissenting 
minister at Bermondsey. He was the 
father of Jasper Mauduit, Esq. of 
Hackney. 

MAURY, Matthew : a refugee gentle- 
man from Castle Mauron in Gascony, 
settled in London for a time, where his 
son J ames was ordained a minister. The 
family afterwai'ds emigrated to Virginia, 
U.S., where their descendants survive. 
Captain Maury, LL.D., belongs to the 
family. 

MAYERNE, Theodore de: a cele- 
brated physician, belonging to a Lyons 
family, originally from Piedmont. He 
studied medicine at Heidelburg and 
Montpelier, where he took his degree of 
M.D. in 1595. He opened a medical 
school at Paris, in which he delivered 
lectures, and obtained an extensive 
practice. Henry IV. appointed him 
his first physician. After the assassina- 
tion of that prince, Marie de Medicis 
endeavoured to convert Mayerne from 
Protestantism ; but he was firm, and 
consequently lost the patronage of the 
court. James I. invited him over to 
England, and appointed him his first 
physician. The universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge conferred honorary de- 
grees upon him, and he obtained a large 
practice hi London. After the execu- 
tion of Charles I. he retired into private 
life, and died at Chelsea in 1655. 

MAZIERES, De : a Protestant family 
of Aunis, north of Saintonge, several 
members of whom fled from France at 
the Revocation. Peter was a lieutenant 
in the French army, and afterwards 
joined the army of William of Orange. 
He settled at Youghal, in Ireland, where 
he died in 1746. Other members of the 
family settled at Cork, where they left 
numerous descendants. 



APPEXPTX. 



HUGUEXOT REFUGEES. 



517 



MERCIER. Philip : a portrait-painter, 
"born at Berlin, of a French refugee i 
family, and. afterwards settled in Lon- 
don, -where he died in 1760. He was 
patronised by Frederick, Prince of Wales. 
Many of his portraits were engraved by 
Simon, Faber, AvriL and Heudelot (re- 
fugee engravers in London), as well as 
bv English artists. 

3IE8XARD, Jeax : one of the pastors 
of the Protestant church of Charenton 
at Paris, from which he fled into Hol- 
land at the Revocation. His brother 
Philip, pastor of the Church of Sarntes, 
was fined 10,000 livres and condemned 
to perpetual banishment ; his church 
was demolished and a cross set up on 
its site. Mesnard was invited to Copen- 
hagen by the queen, Charlotte Amelia, 
and appointed pastor of the French 
church there. He afterwards came over 
to England, and became minister of 
the Chapel-Royal of St. James in 1700. 
He was appointed, a director of the 
French Hospital in 1718 ; he died in 
1727. 

METTAYER, Johx : minister of the 
Patente in Soho ; afterwards minister of 
the French church at Thorpe-le-Soken, | 
where he died in 1707. 

MEUSXLER, Philip : a refugee 
painter of architectural subjects, who 
studied under Nicholas de Larquilliere, 
another refugee artist 

MISSOX, M axt mtliex : one of the 
Protestant judges in the " Chamber of 
the Edict" in the Parliament of Paris. 
At the Revocation he fled into England, 1 
and was selected by the Duke of Ormond 
as tutor to his grandson. Misson tra- 
velled with hini through Europe, and 
afterwards pxiblished several books of 
travels. 

MISSY. Cesar de : son of a refugee 
merchant from Saintonge established at 
Berlin, who studied for the ministry, 
and came over to England in 1731, I 
when he was appointed minister of the i 
French church of the Savoy, in London, 
and afterwards of St. James'. He was 
the author of many higlily-prized works. 

MOIYRE, Abraham : for notice of, 
see p. 294. 

MOLEXLER, Stephex : a refugee 
pastor from the isle of Jourdain, who 
fled into England and became minister 
of the French church at Stonehouse, 
Plvmouth. 



MOXCEAU, Isaac de : see La Jit - 
loan i ere. 

MOXTEXDRE, De : see Lo.roclic- 
foucauld. 

HOXTOLIEU, de Salxt Hip- 
polite. Of this noble family, David 
came to England with the army of 
William III., under whom he also served 
in Flanders. He was made a colonel 
and afterwards a brigadier-general. His 
descendants still survive in several noble 
and gentle families. 

MOTHE, Claude de la : refugee 
minister of the church in the Savoy. For 
notice of, see p. 310. 

MOTTEUAX, Peter Axthoxt : poet 
and translator ; a refugee ironi Rouen, 
who fled into England and settled in 
London in 1660. He first translated 
and published Don Quixote and Rabe- 
lais into English, which were received 
with great favour. He also published 
several volumes of poetiy and a tragedy, 
" Beautyin Distress." Notwithstanding 
his success as an English author, he 
abandoned literature for commerce, and 
made a considerable fortune by a series 
of happy speculations. He died in 1717. 

NADAULD : a Huguenot family who 
settled at Ashford- in -the -Water, in 
Derbyshire, shortly after the Revocation. 
The grandson of the original refugee 
was the Rev. Thomas Xadauld, for up- 
wards of fifty years incumbent of Belper 
and Tnrnditch. One of the members of 
the family was a celebrated watch- 
maker and silversmith. Another was a 
sculptor, who was employed by the 
Duke of Devonshire to execute some of 
the most important works at Chatsworth 
Palace. Others were clergymen, sur- 
geons, and officers in the British army. 

OUYRY, James : a refugee from the 
neighbourhood of Dieppe about the 
period of the Revocation. His family 
became settled in Spitalfields, and were 
owners of freeholds there in the early 
part of last century. Frederic Ouvry, 
treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries, 
belongs to the family ; also Francisca 
I. Ouvry, author of Henri dc Rohan, 
or the Huguenot Refugee, and other 
works. 

PAGET, Yaleriax : a refugee from 
France after the massacre of St. Bartho- 
lomew, who settled in Leicestershire and 
founded a floxuishing family, the head 
of which is Thomas Paget, Esq. of Hum- 



518 



HUG UENO T REFUGEES. appendix. 



berstown. Charles, lately M.P. for Not- 
tingham, belongs to the family. 

PAPILLON, David : a refugee from 
Avranches, where he was imprisoned for 
three years because of his religion. He 
afterwards fled into England, where his 
family prospered. Different members 
of them have since represented the city 
of London, Dover, Eomney, and Col- 
chester in Parliament. The present 
head of the family is David Papillon, 
Esq. of Crowhurst, Sussex. 

PAPIN, Denis : for notice, see p. 
289. 

PAUL, Lewis : inventor of spinning 
by rollers. For notice, see p. 416. 

PECHELL, Samuel : a refugee from 
Montanban in Languedoc, who settled 
in Dublin. From him have descended 
Samuel Pechell, Master in Chancery, 
and Lieutenant-Colonel Paid Pechell, of 
Pagglesham, Essex, created a baronet in 
1797. Two other descendants of the 
family have been rear-admirals and oc- 
cupied seats in the House of Commons. 

PEKRIN, Count : a Huguenot refugee 
from Nonere, where he had large posses- 
sions. He originally settled at Lisburn, 
in Ireland, from which he afterwards 
removed to Waterford and founded the 
family to which Justice Perrin of the 
Irish Bench belonged. 

PETIT, Le Sieur : an officer in the 
Red Dragoons of the Prince of Orange 
on his expedition to England. Many 
descendants of the family have served 
in the British army, and held offices in 
church and state. 

PINETON, Rev. James, de Cham- 
brun : for notice of, see p. 304. 

PORTAL : an ancient noble Protest- 
ant family of Toulouse. For notice of 
the refugees of the name in England, 
see p. 332. 

PRELLEUR, Peter : a musical com- 
poser, born in London of a French re- 
fugee family. He began life as a writ- 
ing-master in Spitalfields, after which 
he applied himself exclusively to music. 
He composed a number of pieces for the 
theatre in Goodman's Fields, in which 
David Garrick, or Garrigue, the son of 
another French refugee, made his first 
appearance as an actor. Prelleur also 
held the office of organist of the church 
of St. Albans, and afterwards of Christ 
Church, Middlesex. 

PRIMROSE, Gilbert : of Scotch ori- 



gin, who settled in France in 1601, as 
minister of the Protestant church of 
Mirambeau, and afterwards of Bour- 
deaux. In 1623 Louis XIII. ordered his 
banishment from France, when he pro- 
ceeded to London and become minister 
of the French church in Threadneedle 
Street ; after which we find him ap- 
pointed chaplain to the king, next Canon 
of Windsor, and eventually Bishop of 
Ely. His two sons, David and James, 
were remarkable men in their time — the 
one as a theologian, the other as a phy- 
sician. Both were authors of numerous 
works. 

PRYME, Matthew de la : a re- 
fugee from Ypres in Flanders during 
the persecutions of the Duke of Alva. 
He settled, with many others of his 
countrymen, in the Level of Hatfield 
Chace, after the same had been drained 
by Vermuyden. His son was the Rev. 
Abraham de la Pryme. George Pryme, 
Esq., late M.P., and professor of politi- 
cal economy at Cambridge, is lineally 
descended from the above. 

PUISSAR, Louis James Marquis 
of : was appointed colonel of the 24th 
regiment in 1695, and afterwards served 
in Flanders. 

PUSEY : see Bouveries. 
RABOTEAU, John Charles : a re- 
fugee from Pont-Gibaud, near Rochelle, 
who settled in Dublin, and prospered as 
a wine-merchant. For notice of his 
nieces, the Misses Raboteau, see p. 202. 
RADNOR, Earl op : see Bouveries. 
RAPIN DE THOYRAS, Paul : for 
notice of, see p. 282. 

RAVANEL, Samuel de : son of a 
Protestant gentleman of Picardy who 
came into England before the Revoca- 
tion. He afterwards married the niece 
of Marlborough. Hozier supposes that 
Edward Ravenel, director of the French 
Hospital in 1740, was his son. 

REBOW : a refugee of this name, 
from Flanders, settled at Colchester, 
from whom Sir Isaac Rebow, knighted 
by King William (whom he entertained), 
was descended. Several members of 
the family have since represented the 
town in Parliament. 

RIVAL, Peter : pastor of several of 
the French churches in London, and 
lastly of that of the Savoy. He was a 
copious author and a vehement contro- 
versialist. He died about 1728. 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



519 



ROBETHON, the Eight Hon. John : 
a French refugee in London. His 
brother remained in Paris, and was 
attorney-general of the mint in 1722. 
"William III. made John Robethon his 
private secretary. He was afterwards 
made secretary to the embassies and 
privy councillor. In 1721 he was elected 
governor of the French Hospital. He 
died in the following year. 

EOCHE, Louis : a refugee manufac- 
turer who settled at Lisburn at the 
same time that Louis Crommelin estab- 
lished himself ther^. He became an 
extensive merchant , and his descend- 
ants are now among the first inhabitants 
of Belfast. 

EOCHEBLAVE, Heney de : pastor 
in succession of the French churches at 
Greenwich, Swallow Street, Hungerford, 
the Quarre, St. James's, and, last of all, 
of Dublin, where he died in 1709. 

ROMAINE : a Huguenot refugee 
who settled at Hartlepool as a corn- 
dealer ; father of the celebrated Eev. 
"W. Komaine, author of the Triumph 
of Faith," for notice of whom, see 
p. 409. 

EOMILLY. For notice of this family 
see pp. 400, 427. 

EOUBILLIAC, Louis-Francis: the 
sculptor; born at Lyons about 1695. 
Haag says he was probably the son of a 
"new convert," and that he only re- 
turned to the rebgion of his fathers. 
His works in England are well known. 
He was buried in the French church of 
St. Martins-le-Grand in 1762. 

EOUBILLAED : see Champagne. 

BOUMIEU : a Huguenot refugee in 
England, descended from Romieu, the 
Albigensian hero. The present repre- 
sentative of the family is Robert Lewis 
Roumieu, the celebrated architect. 

ROUQUET, James : son of a French 
Protestant condemned to the galleys for 
life. The young man reached London, 
and was educated at Merchant Taylors' 
school. He entered the church, but 
became a follower of "Wesley, and super- 
intended Wesley's school at Kingswood. 
He eventually accepted the curacy of 
St. "Werburgh, Bristol, where he laboured 
with great zeal in reclaiming outcasts, 
and died in 1776. 

ROUQUET, N. : a painter in enamel, 
belonging to a French refugee fanidy of 
Geneva, who spent the greater part of 



his life in England. He was an author 
as well as an ai tist, and wrote an account 
of The State of Art in England, which 
was published at Paris in 1755. 

ROUSSEAU, James : an excellent 
landscape-painter, mostly in fresco, son 
of a joiner at Paris, where he was born 
in 1630. He studied art in Italy, and 
on his return to France his reputation 
became great. He was employed in de- 
corating the palaces at Versailles and 
Marley, and in other important works. 
In 1662 he was admitted a member of 
the Royal Academy of Painting, and 
was afterwards elected a member of the 
council. But in 1681, when the perse- 
cution of the Protestants set in with 
increased severity, Rousseau was ex- 
cluded from the Academy because of his 
being a Huguenot. At the same time, 
eight other Protestant artists were ex- 
pelled. At the Revocation of the Edict, 
Rousseau first took refuge in Switzerland, 
from whence he proceeded to Holland, 
and afterwards to England, where he 
settled. The Duke of Montague em- 
ployed him to execute the decorations of 
his town house, on the site of the present 
British Museum. It is also said that 
he superintended the erection of the 
building. He executed other fresco- 
paintings on the walls of Hampton Court, 
where they are still to be seen. He 
died in London in 1693. 

ROUSSEAU, Samuel : an Orientalist 
scholar, the son of a French refugee 
settled in London. He was an extensive 
contributor to the Gen tleman' s Magazine 
on classical subjects, as well as the author 
of several works on the Persian and 
Hindostanee languages. 

ROUSSELL, Isaac : a French Pro- 
testant refugee from Quillebceuf in Nor- 
mandy, who fled into England in 1699. 
He settled in London, and became a sflk- 
manufacturer in Spitalfields. The pre- 
sent representative of the family is John 
Beuzeville Byles, Esq. of Henley-on- 
Thames, 

ROYE, De : see Larochefoueauld. 

RUVIGNY, Marquis of : for notice, 
see pp. 259, and 399 (note). 

SAURIN, Jacques : for notice of, 
as well as other members of the familv, 
see pp. 302, 407. 

SAY : a French Protestant family of 
Languedoc, of whom several members 
settled in England. One of them 



520 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



APPENDIX. 



Samuel Say, who died in 1743, was a 
dissenting minister in London ; another, 
Francis-Samuel, was minister of the 
French church in Wheeler Street. 
Thomas Say emigrated to America, and 
joined the Quakers ; and his son was the 
celebrated natural historian of the United 
States. Jean Baptiste Say, the cele- 
brated writer on political economy, be- 
onged to the same family. 

SCHOMBERG, Dukes of: for 
notices of Frederick Arm and, 1st duke, 
see pp. 233, 262, 268 ; Charles, 2d duke, 
p. 271 ; Menard, 3d duke, pp. 267, 274. 

SIMON : a family of artists originally 
from Normandy, who belonged to the 
Protestant church of Charenton, near 
Paris. John, a refugee in London, 
acquired great reputation as an engraver. 
He was employed by Sir Godfrey Kneller 
to engrave the portraits painted by him, 
a long list of which, as well as of his 
other works, is given by Haag. Simon 
died at London in 1755. 

TASCHER : several refugees of this 
name were ministers of French churches 
in London at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. Pierre de Tascher 
was a director of the French Hospital in 
1727. 

TEXTARD, Leon, Sieur des Mes- 
lars : a refugee who feigned to abjure 
under the terror of the dragonnades, and 
at length fled to England with his wife, 
a sister of James Fontaine, whom no 
terror could shake. They settled in 
London, together with other members 
of the family. 

TEXT AS : Two ministers of this name, 
related to the family of Chamier, took 
refuge in England after the Revocation. 

TEULON or THOLON : an ancient 
family of Nismes, descended from Marc 
Teulon, Sieur de Guirnal. Peter and 
Anthony fled from France at the time of 
the Revocation, and settled at Green- 
wich. Peter went into Ireland, and 
founded the Cork branch of the family, 
to which the late Colonel George Teulon, 
one of the aides-de-camp to the Duke of 
Wellington at Waterloo, Lieutenant- 
Colonel Charles Teidon, and Major Peter 
Teulon, belonged. The present repre- 
sentatives of the family in Ireland are 
B. Teulon, Esq. of Bandon ; Thomas, a 
major in the army ; and Charles Peter, 
a barrister. Anthony Teulon of Green- 
wich married Frances de la Roche, and 



left descendants. Among the present 
representatives of this branch may be 
named Samuel Saunders and William 
Milford Teulon, the eminent architects, 
and Seymour Teulon, Esq. of Limpsfield 
Park, Surrey. Another branch is 
settled in Scotland, represented by 
Captains James and John Teidon. 
Pierre Emile Teulon of Nismes, presi- 
dent of the council under the govern- 
ment of Louis Philippe, is supposed to 
belong to a branch of the family re- 
maining in France. 

THELUSSON : originally a Protest- 
ant family of Lyons, who took refuge 
in Geneva. Peter Thelusson, son of 
John (an illustrious citizen of the Re- 
public) settled in London in 1750, and 
acquired a large fortune by trade. He 
sat in Parliament some time for Malmes- 
bury. His son, Peter-Isaac, was created 
Baron Rendlesham. 

THORIUS, Raphael : a physician 
and celebrated Latin poet, bom in 
France, but a refugee hi England because 
of his religion. He died in 1625, leav- 
ing behind him a son, John, who studied 
medicine at Oxford, and became fellow 
of the College of Physicians of Dublin 
in 1627. He was the author of several 
medical works. 

TRENCH : see La Tranche. 

TRYON, Peter : a wealthy refugee 
from Flanders, driven out by the perse- 
cutions of the Duke of Alva. He 
succeeded in bringing with him into 
England so large a sum as £60,000. 
The family made many alliances with 
English families of importance. Samuel, 
son of the original refugee, was in 1621 
made a baronet of Layer Marney in 
Essex. The baronetcy expired in 1724. 

TURQUAND, Peter : a Protestant 
refugee from Chatelheraidt near Poitiers, 
who settled in London, where his 
descendants still flourish. 

TYSSEN, Francis : a refugee from 
Ghent in Flanders. His son, of the 
same name, became a thriving merchant 
of London. The family is at present 
represented by W. G. Tyssen Amhurst 
of Foulden in Norfolk, lord of the 
manor of Hackney. 

VANACKER, John : a refugee from 
Lille in Flanders, who became a mer- 
chant in London. His grandson Nicholas, 
a Turkey merchant, was created a baro- 
net in 1700. 



APPENDIX. 



HUGUENOT 



REFUGEES. 



521 



YAXDERPUTT, Henry: born in 
Antwerp ; fled to England from the 
religious persecution in the Low Coun- 
tries in 1568, and became a London 
merchant. His great-grandson Peter, 
also a London merchant, was Sheriff of 
London in 1681, and created a baronet 
in 1723. 

- YANXORE, Peter: a Protestant 
refugee from Utrecht. He became a 
celebrated London merchant, and was 
created a baronet in 1628. 

YARENNES, John de : a French 
refugee, whose descendants remain in 
England. Ezekiel G. Varennes is a 
surgeon in Essex. 

YERNEUIL, John : a native of Bor- 
deaux, from which city he fled, on 
account of his religion, to England. He 
was a learned man, and was appointed 
sub-librarian at Oxford, where he died 
in 1617. 

YICOSE, Gut de, Baron de la 
Court : a Protestant noble, who suffered 
frightful cruelties during the drag- 
onnades. He took refuge in London, 
where we find him a director of the 
French Hospital in 1718, and governor 
in 1722. 

YICTORIA, Queen : for notice of 
her Huguenot descent, see p. 397. 

YIGXOLES : a noble Protestant 
family in Languedoc. Charles de Yig- 
noles was a military officer, who fled 
with his wife into Holland at the Revo- 
cation. He afterwards accompanied the 
Prince of Orange into England, fought 
in the Irish campaigns, and settled at 
Portarlington. Many members of the 
family have distinguished themselves in 



the army, the church, and the civil 
sendee. Dr. Yignoles, dean of Ossory, 
and Charles Vignoles, F.R.S., the emi- 
nent engineer, are among the living re- 
presentatives of two branches of the 
fandly. 

Y1LETTES, Sebastian de : a coun- 
try gentleman, lord of Montledier, near 
Castres. Like his ancestors, he was a 
Protestant, and suffered heavy persecu- 
tion at the Revocation. The family 
fled from France, and took refuge in 
foreign lands ; some in England, and 
others in Germany. The names of the 
De Yilettes frequently occur in the list 
of directors of the French Hospital. 
Amongst others we observe those of 
Lieutenant-General Henry Clinton de 
Yilettes in 1777, and of Major William 
de Yilettes in 1779. 

YILLETTE, C. L. de : minister of 
the French church in Dublin, and the 
author of numerous religious works. 

YHSTCENT : numerous refugees of 
this name settled in England, though 
none were men of any particular mark. 

WITTENRONG, Jacob : a Protest- 
ant refugee from Ghent, in Flanders, 
who earned his bread in London as a 
notary. His son became a brewer 
in London, and greatly prospered. He 
was knighted by Charles I. in 1610, 
and created a baronet, of Stantonbury, 
county Bucks, in 1662. 

YYER, John : a refugee pastor, who 
officiated as minister in several of the 
churches of the refuge in London. He 
afterwards went into Holland, where he 
died. 



INDEX. 



A 

Abbadie, Huguenot pastor, clean of Killaloe 
300 

Allix, Huguenot pastor, 303 

Alva, Duke of, interview with Catherine de 
Medicis, 61 ; persecutions in Flanders con- 
ducted by, 66 ; plots against Queen Eliza- 
beth, 82 

America, flight of refugees to, 130, 214 

Antwerp, printing of Bibles at, 15 ; pros- 
perity of, 64 ; sack of, 91 

Armada, Sacred, 91, 13S, 478 

Artizans, refugee, in England — Flemish, 67 ; 
96-127; 451-64; French, 313-39 

Assassination of "William of Orange, 83 (note) ; 
plots to assassinate Elizabeth, 78, 83-9 

Austin Friars, Dutch church in, 132, 133 
(note) 

B 

Barnstaple, French refugees at, 370 
Baronets, English, of Huguenot descent, 403 
Barre, family of, 203 (note), 406 
Bartholomew, massacre of Saint, 69 
Bearhaven, Ireland, James Fontaine's endea- 
vours to establish a fishing-station at, 373 
Beam, massacre of Protestants in, 151 ; dra- 

gonnades in, 178 
Benefit societies established by French refu- 
gees, 319 
Bermondsey, Flemings in, 107-9 
Bethnal Green, descendants of refugees in, 
426 

Beza, Theodore de, 53, 56 

Bible, dearness of MS., 2 ; first printed, 4 ; 
early editions, 7 ; prohibited, 8 ; value of, 
11 ; influence on literature, 12 (note) ; 
Luther's translation of, 14 ; Tyndale's trans- 
lation, 15 ; effects of its circulation, 16 ; 
burning of, 23, 175, 435 

Bidassoa, interview at, 61 

Blanket, the brothers, their manufacture, 
455-6 

Bodt, John de, engineer, 283 
Boileau, family of, 403 



Bonrepos, Riquet de, 161 

Books, burning of, 23, 175, 435 

Bossuet, his praise of Louis XIV. for revoking 
the Edict of Nantes, 183 

Bostaquet, Dumont de— family of, 236 ; 
escape from France, 242 ; flight into Hol- 
land, 249 ; expedition to England, 254 ; 
campaign in Ireland, 263 

Bordeaux, Huguenots at, 175 

Bourdieu, John du. (See Dubourdieu) 

Bourdillon, French pastor, on decay of the 
churches, 350 

Bouverie, family of, 392 

Bow, Flemings at, 110 

Boyne, battle of the, 267 

Brandenburg, French refugees in, 213 

Brigonnet, bishop of Meaux, 19 

Briot, introduces the coining press, 110 
(note) 

Bristol, French church at, 349, 489' 
Burleigh, Cecil Lord, conspiracy against, 

86 ; mayor of Rye's letters to, 99, 100 
Burning of printers, 21 ; of Bibles and books, 

23, 175, 435 

C 

Caillemotte, La, 262 : killed at the Boyne, 

267 

Calvin in Saintonge, 33 ; his care for psalm- 
ody, 40 (note) ; his influence on the organi- 
sation of Geneva, 209 

Cambric manufacture introduced in Ireland, 

366 

Camizards, war of the, 276-281 

Canterbury, first arrival of Walloon refugees 
at, 140 ; their church in the Under Croft, 
143 ; church still in existence, 149 ; silk- 
manufacture at, 336 ; Malthouse Church at, 
347, 485 ; registers of churches at, 482-7 

Cape of Good Hope, Huguenots' colony at, 
215 (note) 

Capell, James, French pastor, 309 

Castelfranc, Lord de, attempted escape of, 
201 



524 



INDEX. 



Catherine de Medicis, letter to the Pope, 52 
(note) ; interview with Duke of Alva at 
Bidassoa, 61 ; connection of, with the mas- 
sacre of Saint Bartholomew, 6S 

Caus, Solomon de, engineer, 288 

Cavalier, John, Camizard general ; his origin, 
276 ; leader in the Cevennes, 277 ; at the 
battle of Almanza, 281; major-general in 
the English army, 282 

Cave, Edward, his speculation in spinning- 
mills with Paul's machine, 422 

Chaise, Pere la, confessor of Louis XIV., 
171-3, 1S2 

Chambon, Alexander, the last galley-slave 
for the faith, 430 

Champion, family of, 403 

Changes of foreign names, 109 

Character of the Protestants — of the Flemish 
refugees, 80, 90, 104, 118, 141; of the 
French Huguenots, 159, 222 {note) 

Charles L, his policy towards the refugees, 
128 ; sends a fleet to Rochelle, 153 

Charles II. , privileges granted by him to the 
Protestant refugees, 221 

Charles IX., state of France at accession of, 
50 ; proposes an edict of amnesty, 51 ; 
witness of the massacre of St. Bartho- 
lomew, 69 ; death of, 73 

Chenevix, M. de, of Metz, burial of, 1S6 
(note), 398 

Chevalier family, 406 

Churches, French, in England — Thread- 
needle Street, London, 132, 340, 46S ; at 
Sandwich, Rye, etc., 133, 222 (note); at 
Norwich, 133, 487 ; at Southampton, 134, 
347, 471 ; Canterbury, 141, 4S2, 4S5 ; in 
Exeter, 256, 349; in Bristol, 349, 489; 
Stonehouse, Plymouth, 349, 491 ; the Sa- 
A^oy, London, 341, 469 ; in Swallow Street, 
342, 470 ; in Spitalfields, 344 ; in the Lon- 
don suburbs, 345 ; Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex, 
350, 493 ; Thorney Abbey, 495 ; decadence 
of the churches, 350 ; Church of the Artil- 
lery, Spitalfields, 350-3, 427 

Churches, French,in Ireland — Portarlington, 
273, 385 ; Dublin, 359 ; Kilkenny, 360 ; 
Lisburn, 3G0-4 ; Cork, 372; Waterford, 
380 

Churches, French, Registers of the, 466 
Church government of the Huguenots, 159 
(note) 

Church in the Desert, 207 {note), 42S 
Churches, Protestant, in France — demo- 
lished, 57 ; destroyed by Louis XIV., 169 ; 
state of Protestants under Louis XIV., 438 
Churches, Walloon, in England — Austin 
Friars, 97, 131, 133 (iiote) ; Sandwich, Rye, 
Norwich, etc., 133; Southampton, 134 
Canterbury, 141 



Civil Wars— in Flanders, 66 ; in France, 59, 
151 

Claude, French pastor, 190 

Clement VIII., Pope, 76 

Clergy of Roman Catholic Church, 9, 17, 38, 
1S3, 195 (note), 440 ; at the French Revolu- 
tion, 440 (note) 

Cloth-manufacture"introduced into England, 
95, 451-8 

Colbert, his policy, 160-1 ; character, 162-5 

Coligny, Admiral, 5S ; attempt to assassi- 
nate, 69 ; his murder, 70 

Coligny, Odo — his tomb in Canterbury 
Cathedral, 144 (note) 

Colchester, Flemish colony at, 120 (note) 

Collections made for refugees, 101, 102 (note 

Colporteurs, French, 36 (note) 

Conde, Prince of, 50, 58 

Conversion of Louis XIV, 181 ; forced con- 
versions of Protestants, 239 

Copying of the Bible, its costliness, 2, 6 

Cork, French settlement at, 366 

Coster, Laurence, and invention of print- 
ing, 4 

Council of Trent, 60 

Courand, French pastor, Southampton, 140 
Cranmer's Bible, 15 (note) 
Crommelin, Louis, at Lisburn, 360-2 

D 

Dauphiny, Huguenots of, 175 

Descendants of the refugees, 3S9, 496 

Desaguliers, Dr., 292-4 

Desert, church in the,' 207, 428 

Des Voeux, family of, 404 

Dissenters, French pastors become, 30S 

Divines, celebrated Huguenot, 299-312; of 

Huguenot descent, 406 
Dollond, John, his life and labours, 414 
Dover, refugees at, 103 

Dragonnades, first attempt at, 174 ; at Bor- 
deaux, 176 ; in Beam, 178 ; at Rouen, 238 
Dreux, battle of, a turning-point, 60 (note) 
Dublin, settlement of refugees at, 125 ; manu- 
factures established in, 358 ; churches, 
359 

Dubourdieu, John, French pastor, 311-2 ; 
317 (note), 365 (note) 

Ducane, or Duquesne, Admiral— his con- 
stancy, 189 ; family of, 406 

Durand, David, F.R.S., 294 

Dutens, Rev. Louis, 409 

E 

Edicts— of 1559, 42 ; of Nantes, 76 ; of Par- 
don, 154 ; of Louis XIV. against Protest- 
antism, 166 ; of the Revocation, 182 ; of 
Potsdam, 213 

Edinburgh, French refugees in, 338 



INDEX. 



525 



Edward III., first settlements of foreign 

artizans in reign of, 96, 452-6 
Edward VI., immigration of Protestant 

Flemings in reign of, 97, 459 ; churches 

granted to, by, 131 
Elizabeth, Queen, difficulties of her position, 

78 ; plots against her, 81-S9 ; Pope's bull 

against, 83, 92 ; policy and religion of, 
- 87, 93 ; protection given by her to the 

refugees, 98, 111, 117 ; visit to Sandwich, 

105 ; Southampton, 139 
Emigration of foreign Protestants — from 

Flanders, 65, 67, 96 ; from France, 99, 169, 

1S3 ; of French manufactures, 313 
Emigration of French priests and nobles, 

442 

England, the asylum of the persecuted 
foreign Protestants, 67, 79 ; numbers of the 
fugitives in, 99 ; settlements of the refu- 
gees in, 95, 313 

Evil May-day, 465 

Exeter — settlement of Huguenots at, 256; 
cathedral service at, 257 (note) ; French 
church at, 349 

F 

Farel, follower of Lefevre, 19 ; escape, 20 
Farmers, the Huguenots as, 156 
Faust, John, of Mentz, 5 
Fens, reclamation of, 124 
Fishing settlements of refugees, 123, 451 
(note) 

Flanders, religious persecutions in, 64, 87, 
90, 433 

Flax-manufactures in Ireland founded by 
refugees, 126, 360 

Flemish refugees in England, 67, 79 ; their 
character defended by Bishop Jewel, SI 
(note) ; settlement at Sandwich, 103-7 ; in 
Southwark, 109 ; various settlements, 110 ; 
numbers of, in London, 112, 12S ; at Nor- 
wich, 115-18 ; in Ireland, 125 ; in Scotland, 
127, 451 ; churches, 131-49 ; names exist- 
ing, 391 ; distinguished descendants of, 
391-3 ; early settlements of Flemings in 
England, 451 

Fleury, Archdeacon, 408 

Fontaine, James, French Protestant refugee, 
life and adventures in England and Ire- 
land, 367-73 

France — the Bible in, 16 ; persecutions of 
the Reformed, 21 ; at the accession of 
Charles IX., 50; massacre of Vassy, 55; 
of Saint Bartholomew, 69 ; renewal of per- 
secution, 151 ; flight of the Huguenots 
from. 1S3 ; articles imported into England 
from, 320 ; at the Revolution, 433 

Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, 
213 



French ambassador, reception of,by Elizabeth 
after massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 8S 

French Hospital, London, 354 

French mechanics in London, Henry VIII.' 
reign, 10S 

French refugees. (See Huguenots) 

Fruit-trees introduced by refugees, 106 
383 

Fund, French refugee relief— collections in 
aid of, 100-2 ; at Geneva, 211 (note) ; in 
Holland, 216 ; in England, 228, 316 

G 

Galley-slaves for the faith, 193-6 ; their 
youth, 198 ; their age and eminence, 199 ; 
the last, 430 ; sale of, 438 (note) 

Galway, Earl of, his career, 269-75 ; his set- 
tlement of Portarlington, 3S2 ; descend- 
ants of, 399 

Gambier, Admiral, 2S6 

Gardening introduced by Flemish refugees 
106 

Gastigny, De, founds the French Hospital, 
354 

Geneva, its independence, and bounty to the 

refugees, 209-11 
German Bible, 14 
German miners in England, 458 
Germany, refugees in, 213 
Glass-manufacture introduced in England 

by Protestant refugees, 329, 331, 461 
Glastonbury, Flemish weavers at, 120 (note) 
God's House, Southampton, 134, 347, 471 
Gols, Gerard de, Sandwich, 133 (note) 
Gospel, translated, 19; preaching of, for- 
bidden, 52 
Gospellers at Meaux, 19 ; at Saintes, 34 
Goujon, Jean, French sculptor, 49, 73 (note) 
Goyer, Peter, refugee at Lisburn, 366 
Graverol, French pastor, 300 
Greenwich, refugee settlement at, 259 

church at, 346 ; glass-house at, 461 
Grenoble, last persecutions at, 429 
Grenvelle, Cardinal, inquisitor in Flanders 
64 

Grote, family of, and descendants, 394 
Guise, Duke of, at Vassy, 55 ; in massacre of 

Saint Bartholomew, 70 ; corresponds with 

Mary Stuart, 81 
Gutenberg and invention of printing, 4 

H 

Hamburg, Bible printed at, 15 (note) 
Hamelin, Philebert, early martyr, 35 (note) 
Hat-making introduced by refugees, 323 
460 

Henry II. of England, early settlement of 
foreign artizans in reign of, 451 



526 



INDEX. 



Henry III. of France visits Palissy, 48 ; civil 
war in reign of, 75 

Henry IV. of France— marriage, 68 ; becomes 
king, 75 ; promulgates the Edict of Nantes, 
76 ; assassination, 76, 151 

Henry VIII. of England — French mechanics 
in reign of, 97, 108 ; his protection of 
Flemish artizans, 462 (note), 463 ; Evil May- 
day, 465 

Hervart, Baron de Huningue, 355, 476 
Holland, the great ark of the fugitives, 216 ; 

its splendid hospitality to the refugees, 

217 

Hops introduced by Flemings, 107 (note) 

Hospital, the French, 354 

Houblons, family of, and descendants, 392 

Huber, John, a galley-slave, 199 

Hugessen, family of, 392 

Huguenots, origin of, 22 ; first persecution 
of, 20, 41 ; spread of "The Religion," 50 ; 
massacre of Vassy, 55 ; civil war, 59 ; 
massacre of St. Bartholomew, 69 ; renewal 
of civil war, 74 ; flight into England, 98 ; 
renewal of civil Avar, 151 ; siege of Ro- 
chelle, 153 ; the Huguenots crushed as a 
political power by Richelieu, and the 
Edict of Pardon issued, 154; Huguenots 
as men of industiy, 156-9 ; form of worship 
and church government, 159 (note) ; Col- 
bert befriends, 160 ; persecution of, by 
Louis XIV., 165 ; cruel edicts against, 167 ; 
emigration of, forbidden, 169 ; attempt to 
purchase conversions of, 173 ; dragonnades 
in Dauphiny and at Bordeaux, 174 ; dra- 
gonnades in Beam, 17S ; Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, 182 ; general flight of the, 
1S7 ; sent to the galleys, 193 ; flight by 
sea of, 201 ; number supposed to have 
escaped, 205 ; refuge of, in Prussia, 213 ; 
in Holland, 216 ; soldiers and officers in 
army of Prince of Orange, 230 ; at the 
battle of the Boyne, 266 ; officers in British 
service, 269 ; men of learning settled in 
England, 286 ; men of industry, 313 ; set- 
tlements in Ireland, 357 ; descendants of, 
in England and Ireland, 3S9 ; the last per- 
secutions of, in France, 429 ; consequences 
to France of banishment of, 433. 

I 

Iconoclasts, the, in France, 59 

Ignatius Loyola, 62 

Indulgences, sale of, 17 

Industry, branches of, established by refu- 
gee Flemings — bays and says making at 
Sandwich, 99, 103 ; other manufactures at, 
30, 106 ; gardening introduced, 106-7 ; 
(note); carpentry, 109 ; brewing, 109 ; dye- 
ing, 110 ; felt and hat making, etc., 110 ; 



bombazine-manufacture at Norwich, 115 ; 
woollen-weaving in west of England, 119; 
thread and lace making, 121 ; mining, 122; 
iron and steel manufactures, 123 ; fishing 
at Yarmouth, 123 ; fen-drainage, 124 ; 
various branches in Ireland, 125 ; in Scot- 
land, 127 ; early manufactures, 458-61. 
Industry, branches of, established by refu- 
gee French— engine-making, 293; instru- 
ment-making, 320 ; beaver hats, 323 ; but- 
tons, 323 ; calico-printing, 323 ; tapestry- 
manufacture, 323 ; silk-manufacture, 324 ; 
silk-stockings, 327; glass-making,' 329 ; 
paper-making, 331, 33S ; lustrings, bro- 
cades, etc., 326; fine linen, 337 ; lace- 
making, 337 ; Irish poplins, 358 ; Irish 
linen-manufactures, 360 ; Irish cambric, 
365 ; Irish woollen-manufacture, 367 
Industry, Huguenot, in France, 156 
Inquisition in Flanders, 64 ; in Spain, 91-3 
Inventors, French refugee, 332 (note), 414, 
417. 

Ireland, refugees in — Flemish, 125 ; French, 

272, 357, 387. 
Iron and steel makers — at Shotley, 122 ; 

Sheffield, 123 

J 

James I. of England— grants of naturalisa- 
tion to refugees in Ireland, 125 ; his pro- 
tection of the refugees, 128 ; attempts to 
introduce silk-manufacture, 324 ; smug- 
gling of French artizans into England in 
hogsheads, 463 

James II. of England — Lis accession, 223 ; 
introduces the Jesuits, 224 ; persecution 
of Scotch Presbyterians and English Puri- 
tans, 224-7 ; comparison of, with LouisXIV., 
225 ; opposed by the nation, 229 ; flight to 
France, 257 ; return to Ireland with a 
French army, 261 ; defeated at the battle 
of the Boyne, 268 

J esuits— Order of, instituted by Loyola, 62 ; 
in Flanders, 63, 83 (note) ; Mary Queen of 
Scots in league with, 89 ; in France, 171, 
1S2, 430, 437 ; in England, 224, 258 (note) 

Jewel, Bishop ; defence of the Flemish 
refugees, SO ; his works proscribed by 
Laud, 130 (?iofe) 

Jortin, Archdeacon, 407 

K 

Kempe, John, Flemish woollen-manufac- 
turer, 454 

Kendal, settlements of refugees in, 120, 454. 
Kent, settlements of Flemings in, 103, 121, 
332, 456 

L 

Labouchere, family of, 400 



INDEX. 



527 



Lace-manufacture introduced by refugees, 
121, 337 

Lasco, John A', superintendent of refugee 
churches in Edward VI., 131 

Laud, Archbishop, his policy with respect 
to Protestant refugees, 128-30 

Lawyers, eminent, sprung from French re- 
fugees, 410 

Lee, William, his invention of the stocking- 
frame, 327 

Lefevre, Jacques, his French translation of 

the Bible, 16 
Lefevre, family of, 400 
Ligonier, Lord, 2S4 

Linen-manufacture introduced in England 
by refugees, 337 ; in Scotland, 338 ; in Ire- 
land, 126, 360 
Lisburn, settlement of refugees at, 360-4 
Literary men, distinguished, of Huguenot 
origin, 409 

Literature and printing, 1 ; influence of the 
Bible on, 12 (note); depression of, in 
France, Louis XIV., 436 

London, settlements of refugees in — Flem- 
ings, 97, 107 ; in Southwark andBermond- 
sey, 109; at Bow, Wandsworth, etc., 110 ; 
census of foreigners in 1571, 112 ; Wal- 
loon churches in, 131 ; French refugees in, 
16S7, 316 ; French churches in, 340 ; de- 
scendants of refugees in Spitalfields, 
412-26 ; Flemings in, in reign of Edward 
III., 454 ; riots against foreigners, 464 

Louis XIII. of France — ■ war against the 
Huguenots, 151 ; issues Edict of Pardon, 
154 

Louis XIV. of France, absolutism of, 163 ; 
his ambition for military glory, 164 ; per- 
secution of the Huguenots, 166 ; his 
amours, 171 ; his Eevocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, 182 ; cruelty of his rule, 184, 
199 ; requires the refugees to be expelled 
from Geneva, 212 ; compared with James 
II. of England, 225 ; results of Louis' rule 
in France, 434 

Louis XIV. of France ^persecutions in 
reign of, 429 ; suppression of Protestant 
literature, and burning of books, 435 

Louis XVI. of France a victim to the des- 
potism of Louis XIV. , 445 

Loyola, Ignatius, 26 

Luther, Martin, his first perusal of the Bible, 
12 ; his translation of Bible, 14 ; on music, 
39 (note) 

Lyons, massacre at, 71 ; Protestant emigra- 
tion from, 206 

M 

Maintenon, Madame de, and Louis XIV. — 
her early life, 171 ; her intrigues, 180 ; 
marriage with Louis XIV., 182 



Majendie, family of, 407 
Manufactures. (See Industry) 
Manuscript literature, dearness of, 1, 5 
Marie Antoinette, victim of Louis XIV., 445 
Marolles, Louis de, a galley-slave, 196 
Marteilhe, Jean, his sufferings as a galley- 
slave, 196 
Martineau, family of, 412, 488 
Mary Queen of Scots, 81-9 
Massacres— of Vassy, 55 ; throughout France, 
58 ; of St. Bartholomew, 69 ; at Lyons, 71 ; 
in Dauphiny and Bordeaux, 175 ; at 
Nismes, 27S ; of the Bevolution, 444 
Massillon, his praises of Louis XIV., 184 
Maturin, Gabriel, and descendants, 407 
Mazarin, Bible, 4; the cardinal, acknow- 
ledges the loyalty of the Huguenots, 155 
Mazeres, Baron, 410 (and note) 
Meaux, the Reformation at, 18 
Medicis, Catherine de, 51 ; letter to the Pope, 
53 (note) ; interview with Alva, 61 ; her 
connection with the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, 67 
Medicis, Mary de, 151, 16S 
Mentz, origin of printing at, 4, 7, 8 
Merchants, Flemish, in London, 111 
Merchants, the Huguenots as, 159 
Millinery, origin of the word, 95 (note) 
Miners, German, in England, 458 
Moivre, Daniel de, 294-7 
Montmorency, Duke of, 43, 57 
More, Sir Thomas, his sentence on John 

Tyndale, 8 (note) 
Mothe, Claude de la, pastor, 310 
Motteau, refugee author, 411 
Mutual benefit societies of refugees, 319 

N 

Names of manufactured articles, origin of, 

95 (note); changes of, by Flemings and 

French, 109, 385, 390, 395 
Nantes, Edict of, 182 ; Revocation of, 182 ; 

depopulation of, 206 ; massacre at, 444 
Navarre, Henry of. (See Henry IV.) 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, steel and iron makers at, 

122 ; early glass-makers at, 461 (and note) 
Nonconformist emigrants to America, 130 
Norman (benefit) society, Bethnal Green, 

319 (note) 

Norwich, settlement of Flemings at, 113 ; 
conspiracy against refugees, 117 ; Walloon 
church at, 133, 4S7 ; silk-manufacture at, 
336 ; early settlements of Flemings at, 452, 
456, 463 

Numbers of Alva's victims in the Nether- 
lands, 66; killed in the massacres in France, 
1572, 71 ; of strangers in London, 1550 and 
1571, 99, 112 ; of foreign workmen in 
Norwich, 115, 118 ; of Huguenots in 



528 



INDEX. 



France, Louis XIV., 169 ; of refugees from 
France, 205 ; of refugees in England, 287, 



Officers, Huguenot, in army of William III., 

232 ; at the Boyne, 269 
Orange, principality of, 220. (See William 

III. of Orange) 
Ormonde, patronage of refugees by Duke of, 

126 (note), 363, 366 

P 

Palissy, Bernard, life and history, 24-4S 
Paper, manufacture of, introduced by re- 
fugees, 127, 15S, 331 ; early manufacture, 
460 

Papillon, family of, 406 

Papin, Dr. Denis, 289 

Pare, Ambrose, 49, 69, 73 

Paris, burning of printers at, 21 ; Palissy at, 
47 ; Protestant churches destroyed at, 57 ; 
massacre at, 69 ; rejoicings at, 72 ; rejoic- 
ings on the Revocation, 1S3 ; destruction 
of Protestant churches at, 185 ; Protestant 
pastors banished from, 190 ; at the Revo- 
lution, 443-5 

Parliament, Huguenots in, 405 

Pastors, celebrated Huguenot, 299-312 ; list 
of deceased, 351 (note) 

Paul, Lewis, inventor of spinning by rollers, 
416-24 

Pauli, Dr. , on the French church at Canter- 
bury, 150 

Peers of Huguenot descent, 397 

Persecutions. (See Flanders and Huguenots) 

Philip II. of Spain, 61, 64; laughs at news of 
the great massacre of Protestants at Paris, 
72 ; plot against Elizabeth's life, S5 ; his 
Sacred Armada, 91 ; contrasted with Eliza- 
beth, 93 

Philip II. of Spain, 61, 64, 93, 433 
Physicians, Huguenot, proscribed, 289, 294 
Pineton, Jacques, pastor, his escape from 

France, 304 
Plots against life of Queen Elizabeth, 81, 85, 

89 (note) 

Plymouth, landing of refugees at, 222 ; 

church at, 349 
Popery, popular aversion to, in England, 224 
Popes — Alexander VI., prohibition of print- 
ing, S ; Paul IV. issues first Index Exptir- 
gatorius, 23; Pius IV. attempts to suppress 
heresy, 41; Pius V. refuses assent to marri- 
age of Henry of Navarre, 68 ; his bull against 
Elizabeth, 83 ; Clement VIII., his denun- 
ciation of the Edict of Nantes, 76 ; Sixtus 
V. reissues bull against Elizabeth, 92 ; 
Innocent XL, his rejoicing at the Revo- 
cation of the Edict, 183 



Portal, family of De, 332 
Portarlington, settlement of refugees at, 273, 
3S1, 432 

Potters, refugee, at Sandwich, 106 ; at 
Norwich, 115 (note) ; Staffordshire, 116 
(note) 

Prices of manuscripts, 2 

Printing, invention of, 1 ; of the Bible, 4-16 ; 
attempts to suppress, 21, 23 ; in Scotland, 
128 (note) ; in England, 460 (note) 

Protestantism in England, 77, 87, 129, 224 

Protestants, foreign. (See Flanders and 
Huguenots) 

Prussia, Huguenot refugees in, 213 

Q 

Queen of England, her Huguenot descent, 
397 

R 

Raboteau, escape of the Misses, 202 
Radnor, Earl of, 392 
Ramus, Peter, 49, 73 

Rapin-Thoyras, the soldier-historian, 254, 

282 

" Reconnaissances " of French refugees, 341 
Reformation heralded by printing, S ; at 
Meaux, 19 ; at Saintes, 34 ; supporters of, 
26 ; in Flanders, 64 ; in England, 79 
Reformed. (See Flemings and Huguenots) 
Refugees, foreign, defence of, by Bishop 
Jewel, SI (note) ; Flemish, in England, and 
settlements, 95-128 ; refugee churches, 131- 
49 ; French in Switzerland, 208 ; in 
Prussia, 213 ; in Africa, 215; in Holland, 
216 ; in England, 222 et seq. ; religion of, 
287 ; trades of, 313 ; aid given to, 315 ; 
benefit societies of, 319 ; industry of, 339 ; 
churches of, 340 ; in Ireland, 356 ; descend- 
ants of, 3S8 ; effects of settlement on 
England, 448 
Refugee relief fund, 228, 315-6 
Relations of England with France and Spain, 
77 

Revolution, French, and its causes, 441 
Richard II., foreign artizans in London, time 
of, 45S 

Richelieu, Cardinal, his policy, 152 ; at siege 
of Rochelle, 153 ; his toleration of Hugue- 
nots, 154 

Ridolfi, agent in plots against life of Eliza- 
beth, S4 

Riots in London against foreigners, 111 ; in 
Norwich, 116 ; in Canterbury Cathedral, 
ltf (note); at Norwich, 463 ; in London, 
465 

Roche, M. de la, refugee author, 299 (and 

note) 

Rochelle, sieges of, 75, 153 
Romaine, Rev. W., 409 



INDEX. 



529 



Roman Catholics in England, S2 ; priests 
persecuted at the French Revolution, 
441 

Romilly family, the, 400, 427 
Ross, Bishop of, plot against Elizabeth, 84 
Russell, Lady Rachel, her descent, 399 
{note) 

Ruvigny, Marquis de, at Greenwich, 259, 

399. (See Galway, Earl of) 
Rye, landing of refugees at, 99 ; testimony 

to their good character, 222 (note) 

S 

Sacred Armada, 91-3, 138, 478 
Sailcloth, manufacture introduced, 157 (and 
note) 

Sailors, refugee, 21S, 2S5, 349 
Saintes, gospellers under Palissy at, 34 
Saintonge, painful incident at, 177 
Saint Germains, treaty of, 60 
Sancerre, siege of, 74 

Sandwich, settlement of Flemings at, 98, 
103-6 

Saurin, Jacques, refugee pastor, 302 
Saurin, Irish Attorney-General, 405 
Savoy, Protestants of, aided by William III., 
271 

Savoy, Church in the, Strand, 310, 317, 341, 
469 

Schceffer, and invention of printing 4, 6 
Schomberg, Marshal, 189, 233 ; campaign in 
Ireland, 262 ; death at the Boyne, 268 ;— 
Charles, second Duke of, 271 ; — Menard, 
third Duke, in Ireland, 267 ; in Spain, 
274 

Science, refugee men of, 287, 411 

Scotland, Flemings in, 127, 451 (note) ; French 
refugees in, 33S 

Settlements of refugees. See Flemish, Hugue- 
nots, and Industry) 

Sheffield, settlement of Flemings at, 123 

Sieges of Huguenot towns, 152 ; of Rochelle, 
153 

Silk-manufacture attempted in England, 
324 ; established by the French refugees, 
325 ; at Canterbury and Norwich, 336 

Soldiers, Huguenot, — emigration of, 218 ; in 
army of William III., 232 ; in Ireland, 262 ; 
recruited in Switzerland, 265; at the Boyne, 
267 ; at Athlone and Aughrim, 270 ; cam- 
paign in Savoy, 271 ; in Spain, 274 ; in the 
Low Countries, 2S4 

Southampton, early refugees at, 134; their 
church, 134-S ; influx of refugees, 348 ; 
church of " God's House," 471 

Southwark, Flemish refugees in, 109, 464-5 

Spain under Philip II., 93 ; ^modern condi- 
tion, 433 

2 



Spinning by rollers, invention of, by Lewis 
Paul, 421 

Spitaliields, refugee manufacturers in, 326 ; 

churches in, 340 ; handloom-weavers of, 

412 ; descendants of refugees in, 425, 432 
Steel and iron manufactures introduced in 

England by refugees, 122, 458 
Stonehouse, Plymouth, French church at, 

349, 491 

Strafford, Earl of, encourages linen-manufac- 
ture in Ireland, 126 
Surgeons, refugee, in England, 298 
Swallow Street French church, 342, 470 
Switzerland, refugees in, 208-11, 265 

T 

Taunton, French refugees at, 371 
Taxes of the Roman Chancery, 17 (note) 
Thorney Abbey, French church at, 495 
Thorpe-le-Soken, French church at, 350, 

493 

Threadneedle Street, French church in, 340, 
468 

Throgmorton, leader of conspiracy at Nor- 
wich, 117 

Trade in French goods, 320 

Trades established by refugees. (See In- 
dustry) 

Tours, massacre at, 58; depopulation of, 
206 

Trench, family of, 398. 
Trent, Council of, 60 

Tyndale's translation of Bible, S ; martyr- 
dom, 15 

U 

Undercroft, French church of the, Canter- 
bury Cathedral, 144 

V 

Vassy, massacre of, 55 

Vaudois, massacre of, 22 ; Bible committed 
to memory by Vaudois youth, 34 (note) ; 
crusade against, by Louis XIV., 271 

Vermuyden, Dutch engineer, in the Fens, 
124 

Vignolles, family of, 237, 383, 385 
Villars, Marshal, interview with Cavalier, 
279 

Vitelli, Chapin, offers to assassinate Queen 

Elizabeth, 85 
Volumes printed in fifteenth century, 21 (note) 

"Walkers" of cloth, Flemish derivation of 

the word, 120 (note) 
Walloons. (SeeFlemings) 

M 



530 



INDEX. 



Wandsworth, Flemish gardens at, 107 ; 
manufactures at, 110 ; French church at, 
345 

Waterford, refugee settlement at, 380 
Wickliffe's translations of Bible, 8 (note) 
William III. of Orange, 219 ; recruits his 
army with Huguenot officers and soldiers, 
230 ; expedition to England, 254; campaign 
in Ireland, 261 ; assists the Protestants in 
Savoy, 271 

Winchelsea, settlement of refugees at, 102 



Wolsey, Cardinal, on printing, 9 (note) 
Women, sufferings of Huguenot, 173, 179 
195, 203 

Wool of England, 95, 452 ; smuggling of, 

157 (note), 457 
Worstead, Flemish settlement at, 451 
Wyatt, his partnership with Lewis Paul, 

417-24 

Y 

Yarmouth, Flemish fishery at, 123 



THE END. 



Printed by R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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